Outlast Whistleblower Novelization
by BizarroVeR
Summary: The job came like an answered prayer to Waylon Park, and though it was only a temporary position he was promised a referral to a sister company of the Murkoff Charity Organization. But as Waylon delves into his work he is made aware that Murkoff's practices are far from ethical, and a terrible influence has corrupted the minds of his employers. Now, home seems like an illusion.
1. Chapter 1

**Still working to edit this up, not finished with writing the whole thing up but I don't know when I'll finish it. Let me know what I can change to improve this, it won't be the last time I edit this. GRoan. As always I own none of this Outlast characters, I just enjoy these novel projects. Enjoy.**

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><p><strong>The Engine<strong>

I'm thinking of math equations when some semblance of consciousness drags back into my mind. It's something I used to do when I was taking classes at Berkeley. I'd get so boggled with numbers, from morning to night. I'd stare at the same equation for hours until I realized I was too exhausted for this nonsense, and lay my head down to sleep, drooling all over my textbook. At some unholy hour of the night I might chance the climb to my top bunk without waking my roommate, or climb in bed with him, and he'd make the climb to my top bunk. Most cases I'd stay in my uncomfortable and cramped chair until I was roused, my head throbbing and a knot in my spine from the improper sleeping technique. Such good memories. So dull and pleasant. Safe.

My hand twitches against the cold floor, the cement, and my back aches. Oh, how it aches. My head throbs as if I just threw back two bottles of hard liquor, a feat I'm sure would kill me outright but I'm certain the sensation must be equivalent. I can't get it in me to move, it hurts too much to try and focus, decide what has happened. Something has happened, hasn't it? In a panic, I realize I can't remember! The notion sends a swell of buzzing through my mind, as I try and decide. I try and decide the cube of sixty-four. It's four. Four people. Four.

Accident. I've been in some sort of accident. Haven't I? That's the answer. I took my eyes off the road for a second. A second was all it took. That's what they always say. One second can ruin a lifetime. Irreversible damage. Oh god, I was hurt. I—

Then I remember. That history was over, done. I moved on. There were bills to pay, you needed money to live on. Then the letter, a job. This would fix everything. I would do the work, get paid, and move on. Survive. The job….

The work.

_Oh god. What have I done?_

I lose consciousness for some time longer. I keep track by running numbers. The script. I remember running script, waiting impatiently for the lines to load. I was cutting it close, I didn't normally work like this. I knew something was wrong while I was seated there, trying to focus, too distracted. It was an easy fix.

"_Are you happy, Mr. Park?_"

"Yes I'm happy," I wanted to say. "Can't you see this big grin slapped on my face?" But I didn't say that. I kept my mouth shut as I worked. My cheesy sweeter vest damp with sweat because I was anxious and in a hurry. Too much that I was botching up the job, not thinking about what I was doing. Just going through the motions, plugging in commands without reading the errors. I was better than this, I was just being careless. That's what got me. I wasn't thinking about the people around me, the hints they dropped. They were way ahead of me. I wasn't paying attention, wasn't reading the signs. How stupid could I have been? I was so intent on getting the job done, I didn't stop to think. I should have stopped. There was so much I should have done, but didn't. So many things I should have said, but put it all off. Too literal. My problem was I was too literal.

I jerk a bit when I come to, my eyes opening a crack. White light blinded me. I know I'm not wearing my glasses, I don't where they've gone. I can't make out my surroundings, just blurs and shapes. I needed them to read, for the little details. But it's hard to make out what I'm seeing. Was I even awake? I take a short breath and choke on the harsh air. It's not cold, but it wants to be. The air has a strange quality, sterile but alive with vibrations. I remember those sensations pulsing through my skin the first time I set foot on Mount Massive's soil. The recollection sent a tremor down my spine, and I felt sick to my gut. It might've been caused by the vertigo, as I try an open my eyes to see. Screens. Two sets of six, twelve in all. That smell again, as I swallow the saliva that gathered at the back of my throat. I don't want to get up, to think about mobility. I just want to lie here and forget about the world, about the strange sounds moving around me. Equipment. Do they have equipment?

I've been in an accident. I'm not dressed in my usual warm clothing, to combat this merciless cold that haunts the bone white corridors. I don't know what I'm in, it feels like a scrubs. The important detail, it's not mine. How many times do I need to remind myself, I've not been in an accident. It's old history. I want to forget. I want to leave it behind. I want to leave so much behind. But I'm stuck in this loop, I won't stop tumbling back into it. Reminds me too much.

I feel it now. The peculiar sense of vulnerability that rolls through me. I remember it well. I focus more on the screens. Twelve. I don't recall there meaning, but their presence feels invasive. The screens are dangerous somehow, someone had explained why. It was a conversation during breakfast that I overheard. You watch them too long, some people go blind. I try and make a sound as I turn my eyes off them, but my throat is suddenly dry. I hear movement, soft shoes moving over cement and my eyes locate a blue shape gliding towards me. I don't recognize him. I might, but I don't. The tall figure stands over me for but a second, and it's in that length of time that I conclude that mobility is not yet available. I try and shut my eyes to blot out the world, the screens, but I'm being lifted up.

Strong hands mold around my chest, the brief impulse to choke or dry heave over his shoulder passes, as I'm pitched forward. Thankfully. I try and lift an arm up to shove him off, but the weak limb only fumbles about at his backside as the room spins away. I'm barely holding on, the desire to sleep and escape what is happening is too strong. Even when I'm thrown back into a hard, cold chair, I can't shove it into my sense of self-preservation to give a fuck. My head rolls to the side groggily and my eyelids drop, the room fading back to dark. Back to sleep and dreams, and obscure math equations with no meaning.

I manage to open one eye and tilt my head, as a blue arm crosses into view. Thick black gloves extend up to the elbow and stop there. They look expensive. They are also tightening sharp little loops over my wrists, so tight they bite into my skin. I whimper as they adjust the straps just a little more, the mechanism clicks somewhere far from my ears. I open my other eye, startled by the face leaning over. A mask. The man is dressed head to toe in a full body, blue smock. He has an associate dressed the same, but wearing the dark black gloves and a heavy respirator over his face. I don't want to think about what they're doing.

The first man, the one that lifted me, shoves my bare foot back into a hard brace. He hurts my heel when it collides with the metal back, and I listen to the soft click as the latch constricts, painfully around my ankle. I try to pull my arm back, to push him away, but I've already forgotten my hands are secured tight. The straps cutting into my wrists hurt, and I make another meager sound in my throat. All I can think now is I want out. I want out so bad, it hurts.

But he wouldn't let me go.

I focused between the two figures, the man that resembles an insect, and the man wearing only blue smocks. Hard lines define his face, and there's… something strange in his eyes. Something I can't describe. It's not in my nature to stare people in the eye, but I can't help it. I have no escape.

The man in the respirator reaches over my head, and I try to duck forward. But, he presses his hand over my forehead and pushes my head back into another painful contraption. He tightens a loop over my feverish brow, and the device has it fixed to where my head is locked back and I have only the twelve screens within my peripheral. I'm gazing at them as my eyes droop, I don't want to think about it. About the blindness caused, seizures, the rumors that spread like wild fire. I shouldn't have snooped. There was so much I shouldn't have done. The nausea returns, and I try to focus on the little camera on the tripod, off to the side. If I can lock on that, I can watch it. I think I'm going to pass out or throw up, maybe both.

"Open those eyes," the voice says.

I recognize it. Or I don't. The man in blue leans over, there's an odd smirk pressed in his lips. My eyes move to his face slowly, as he lowers into my line of sight. The other man with the respirator moves away, I don't care. As far as I'm concerned, he no longer exists. The man before me continues to speak, "You don't have to wake up, but open your eyes." I don't care for what he says, it doesn't make sense. It would mean the world to me if he just shut the hell up and let me rest.

I let my eyes slip shut, my brain already diving into the blissful zone of nothing. I make a mental promise I'll look later, if I felt like it.

Pain accompanied by a loud sound causes my eyes to snap open, my focus fully on him now. I take a sharp breath as the stinging works through my cheek, my eyes watered. Did he…. He just.

"What's the matter?" he asked. His eyes glanced over my head, checking the restraints. "Somebody hit you?" His eyes. There was something in his eyes. Lustful, was this lust I was seeing? My heart began beating in my chest, so hard I could feel it press into the thin shirt I wore. The rumors. I remember the rumors about some of the people. "Here. Let me help."

They were only rumors at the time. I didn't want to know. I didn't want to see. All this time, blind. Now, I couldn't get away.

I didn't know what to expect, but the way he spoke. That carnal tone he took, made me want to squirm away.

He leaned forward and I froze, my jaw locked and finger tips digging into the hard armrests of the chair I was glued to. I wanted to crawl away, make pitiful little sounds as I moved to the furthest corner of the room. Somewhere I could put my back, protect my body. I felt his hot breath on my cheek, and he paused for a moment moaning softly. My jaw _quivered_, but somehow my teeth were locked so tight my throat ached. I was now wide awake. He crept up my face, making wet hungry sounds right in my ear. He wasn't human. My throat tightened and my toes dug into the cold floor, I could have scrapped all the skin off my toes and I wouldn't give a damn. Anything to set my mind away from…. He finished, trailing his tongue along the edge of my brow leaving a cold, wet patch on my cheek. My eyes remain fixed on him as he slowly rocked back, tongue still visible between his lips as he watched me. Smug pleasure thick in his eyes.

I wanted to appear disgusted, or outraged. But honestly I felt like a child. A cold whimpering, defenseless child, lost in this place I had thought I'd known. It was all over my face, I knew. It was impossible for me to look anything but broken and pathetic, tears in my eyes, saliva drying on my cheek. And this guy, fueling his erotic ego to break another man. I want to go home.

I wasn't paying attention, but sometime, somewhere ago soft alerts began beeping. Minor sounds I couldn't be bothered with, while the man was fixated on my face. Until a soft voice spoke up. "Hey Andrew, you getting these alerts?" It only meant I wasn't alone in this room. Even if I was surrounded, I wouldn't feel safe. Not with him there, staring at me.

"Kinda busy here," Andrew said. I nearly mumbled something pathetic as the dominating sneer melted from his face, and became something almost human as he turned to address the speaker.

"It sounds like real trouble," said the other, timid. He was afraid of Andrew. But Andrew had returned his cruel gaze to me, concentrating on something he wanted to see in my eyes. I couldn't do anything but stare back. "At the Engine," the voice went on, while Andrew's focus was redirected. "They said Hope made a lateral ascension."

At Andrew's back the screens flashed to life, screeching with twisted images. I didn't look at them, the twelve screens were forgotten while Andrew was in my line of sight.

"Billy Hope," Andrew snapped. He turned to the speaker, and I wanted to envision the other man cringing under his gaze. I didn't want to feel like the only one here. "Shit. And they're not happy about it?"

"No," the voice answered. There was a brief pause, as Andrew mulled over what he was told. He turned away setting his chin on his knuckles, and I felt the tension flow from my wrists. My eyes drifted off him to view the screens, beyond his shoulder. I blinked against the pulsing light, the way they danced and quivered in black and white. That was… oh no.

Where was I? No! Oh god, NO!

"Shit. Shit, shit, shit," Andrew growled. He brushed by my shoulder, but he had faded from my concern. I couldn't take my eyes off the screens, the screen. Synchronized into a single broadcast. "Come on."

There was no sound. No brutal slam of a door to announce their departure, no indication they had left at all save for the hasty and displeased bark of Andrew as he had stepped from my line of sight. To be honest, I didn't give a fuck. I wasn't looking for them, I was staring at the screen and the odd pulse of figures and shapes it formed. I have no conception of how long I sat there, absorbing what was shown. What felt like minutes began to draw, spiraling back into seconds. How did this happen? Why was this happening?

I had an accident.

That's all my mind would supply. I drag my arm against the restraint, a little more, and a little more. The binding holds, my only success are the marks I don't doubt are now branded in my skin. It doesn't stop me from trying.

It starts in the back of my head. The car. Or was it a truck? Owned a car first, we owned a car. No, it was always a truck. I'm seeing things in the Rorschach's, flashing, blinding, moving. I want to see things, familiar things. Images to remind me of home. Was I supposed to see something? A gate, an elevator. Take it down to the lab. REMs, scans. I wasn't familiar with the medical field, but I had seen an X-Ray of my skull before, after… it was after the accident I decided. That accident. I say something strange, murmured my name. After a short span I realized I was muttering to myself, trying to remind my head of something. What is happening? What is happening? I'm seeing things leap off the screens, moving around my head. I want to look away. I was going to focus on something, but I can't find the point I had set on. Lock on, focus. Keep away from the Engine. Away from the Engine. No, was I trying to come up with a logarithm to salvage my mind?

Math equations. Algorithms. Stuff I studied but it was beyond me, this chemical engineering bull crap they thought could make mortals into gods. It was all theories and in part, superstitions. Rumors. They were always telling ghost stories around lunch time, the highlight of the day when break rolled around. I was seeing trays now, my mind suggested flat trays swimming past the screen. Then skulls, then flowers, then ink blot tests. Ribbons. Gates. Elevators. Trucks. How long had it been? Not since I was sat down….

How long had I been here? Adverse… effects. People saw shapes, when you were drowsy enough. Worked enough late hours into the dawn, or just had terrible sleeping habits. I did. But I never. No, I did. But some of the people, they saw. They saw. They saw. They saw.

A high shriek filled the room. It was loud enough to drill through my ears and burn my throat. They were in a way beautiful, but morbid. The flowers slumped into skulls, then back into ribbons. It didn't take me long to realize the noise was me, I was screaming at the top of my lungs. I tried to jerk out of my chair, my ankles and wrists rubbing hard at their binds. I thought there were people with me, more men in scrubs staring at me. I groaned and whined, why wouldn't they help me? Why couldn't they help me!

The room began to distort. The walls bled with the inkblots, wet gray forms crawling from open wounds that splint in the walls. I couldn't make out where they came from, if it was real or not. No. I was dreaming. I was asleep, dreaming. It's a nightmare, I'll wake up when it's too much. Everything will be all right.

The shapes crept closer, thick ribbons tightening over my eyes and neck. A wet sensation moved from my forehead to the back of my neck. Then the pain. Piercing pain drilling through my spin and out my chin. I felt a pressure on my thigh and when I looked, there was someone leaning over me talking about the cube of eight. Numbers in my head. Think of numbers.

My throat was raw from shrieking, the horrible sound bounced throughout the room perpetually. I just want it to end. Stop. I try to shut my mouth, cease my horrible racket. But I can't move. I sit propped in the chair like a puppet, absorbing the static that burns through my mind. Somehow it all clicks, my brain flat lines and I feel nothing. Not the room, or the images. I see nothing but swirls and translucent membranes stretching. I'm somewhere far away. A distant memory. It's not a happy one.

The truck. The accident. The job.


	2. Chapter 2

The Job

It was universal around Mount Massive, and we always joked about it. We, the technicians that always seemed holed up in one of these little cramped work spaces that dotted the facility. We weren't bothered much by the Murkoff stiffs that went roaming around, or the shady security. If we did our work and did it well, Murkoff liked us, they liked us a lot. I had to emphasize this A LOT description, you could do just about anything when you were off shift, anything. I heard from someone you could even commit murder, if it didn't inconvenience the company.

Only a handful of people would ever dredge up that joke. They were the kind of people that had the capacity to creep you out, and you never wanted to be in a room alone with them.

We were prohibited from bringing along personal devices such as iPhones, laptops, anything that could get a network signal. When I first signed up for the Murkoff Technical Division, I was given a pile of papers that restricted many of my personal freedoms, denoted that I understood all of this and the work I would be doing, and would fulfill my duty as technical support until I was terminated or until my contract expired. These pages and words stretched further than what I could see, but I was assured that it was all good. 'Mandatory precautions' they had called it. I had no idea what my work would entail.

The doctors were not psychologists, they were scientists. I became aware all too soon that what Murkoff was doing was immoral and wrong, and I'd go as far to say evil. And what I was doing… The people I worked with, they promised me this was helping. Helping. I was somehow HELPING these people that were shrieking and sobbing? No, I don't know what Murkoff was doing, but it was not charitable. It was punishment! No one deserved this! No one! No matter what they did!

It was not difficult to find an empty office, or closet to work in. Most the time the technicians could be found in these areas, reading a book or playing a video game. Doctors sometimes sought these spaces for the quiet while they went over notes, discussing matters of the Engine and chemical rates or the condition of their assigned subject. We'd screw around with security if they were hunting for someone specific, and they used the employees ID number.

"Oh, you mean Records closet. He's over in the Records closet." And the guard would give you about two seconds before he'd say something, and demand you show him exactly where this 'Records closet' was hiding.

Everyone on security was a complete prick.

My hands tremble anxiously as I worked, it took some time before the shakiness dissolved to a tolerable degree. Until then, I was constantly making errors and erasing the patch I was writing up. A few of my colleagues that were the closest sort of people I had to friends, would affectionately direct security my way as 'domain obscura.' I was hard to find, and just as difficult to page over the intercom when buried myself in work.

I took a sip from the large mug I had. The side said Coffee, but I'd always been partial to tea. Murkoff company mugs. People would just leave them sitting around, and some of the desperate type would finish off what might be the remains of a luke warm beverage. People here lost themselves easily. Or it could be people wanted to be sick so they could call in. I've covered for a few of those guys.

I glanced over the small area I had set shop in. There was little light in my section, aside from the glimmering computer components and the little laptop at my fingertips. I had buried myself in the back of a large utility closest, the shelves that lined the path to the fenced in back were stuffed with outdated computer components. There were a few other obscure items abandoned on the shelves to collect dust, boxes of printing paper and a few CB radios. I was seated in the back of the darkened fenced off area, where it was once dedicated to storing restricted goods. Possibly whatever was cutting edge at the time. The dull red sign to my left enforced that the area was Restricted, but the gate was left open for anyone's use. I felt assured that if someone did come in, I'd hear them and have a chance to put the laptop away. All that, and look casual about being here without raising questions. I hadn't had any close calls yet, but my ratio tipped steadily each time I slunk off to one of these closets. It wasn't unusual, and no one ever pried too much when someone wanted to be alone. We were all lonely guys separated from our girls.

Murkoff had a sort of dome on operations that underwent beneath the Mountain. Our internet was contained, and we had no outside contact. And to make this clear to a few bored hackers, they didn't want us deviating from the grid. This didn't stop us a hundred percent of the time, though a great deterrent it was. All we ever received was a dock in pay and a mark. Just a slap on the wrist, but it let us know that Murkoff was watching.

I wasn't assigned a company laptop, but a colleague let me borrow his for the day. I knew what to do to set up my bridge in the grid, but I wasn't any less tense about it. Had to work fast once the connection was made, sign in to mutemail and go through the security twenty-twenty. I could appreciate the precautions and everything, but did the sight not understand I had a very tight schedule to work in? Nine dollars a month, plus tax. None of that was on a card, I set up everything when Murkoff handed over the first stack of contracts.

There was a name in the system I had my eye on for a while. I contacted a few others, sent out messages. I had no idea if they received the emails I sent, or if they even gave a damn. I would continue to do what I could from my end, for as long as I could manage. My patch was secure, the domain code encrypted enough that it took me a few tries whenever I wanted to use it. It was the best I could do in the time constraints, and I needed to compose something.

I adjust my glasses, and again check over my shoulder toward the lockers on the other side of the room. There was no one, no prying eye. No cameras lurking, no shadows I might have missed. I was alone in the small room, the soft twitters of abandon computer towers still functioning, chirp with every error they purge. I turn back to the computer and open the new letter. I had the email memorized, but what should I say this time?

"You don't know me, have to make this quick." That was good, I guess. I began typing, my fingers become steadily faster as I lip read the note back. "They might be monitoring." If someone was watching, all that they'd get was a bunch of random numbers and letters. Whitenoise I sometimes called it. I did test drive a few times before I began this side hobby of mine, visiting the restricted sights and making as much of a 'ruckus' as I could, via text online. My pay was docked whenever I went to youtube out of cription, but while my patch was on I could check out what the CIA was up to. Not as much fun as it sounded.

I typed in two weeks, but didn't bother to go back and fix it. The automatic spell correction kept me from looking like a complete fool, but the note warns early I'm not going to revise this till dawn. Caps lock Murkoff, because I don't need that misspelled, and I don't need to bother correcting it.

I look up, certain I've heard something. Just the intercom, security looking for someone hiding in the closet. I roll my shoulders and return to typing, I needed to get this done and sent. "…but seriously, fuck those guys." I wasn't heavy on using profanity, but in this context it seemed appropriate. As always I elect to be as vague with the details of my concerns as I can, only because what I have to reveal is too farfetched to be credible. I don't have time to explain matters, or to spill the sort of torture that could be believable. What I saw was terrible, and I had no method of my own to stop it. If I did, I would. But I'd had enough of the spotlight for now.

I drew back from the cheerful glean of the screen to reread. Was I missing anything, anything to promote my case? I rub at my knuckles to ease out some of the chill and pop the joints, then another sip from my cold tea. Yuck.

This is enough, there's nothing else I can slip in to make the case more appealing. I glance back over my shoulder, at the metal gate and padlock left open. It should be fine, I haven't been away too long. As I spin back, I take note of my leg bouncing anxiously under my palm. Jeez, what a bad habit. I tried willing my leg to stop and it worked for a brief span, until my knee was back to anxious quakes. Just forget it. Get the note composed, then I could get some rest.

"It needs to be exposed." I practically pronounced each syllable of that final line. Another nervous tick I developed, cracking my knuckles until the joints ached. Even if I realized I was doing it, I still did it. I was too high strung, like all the other people tied up in this place.

This wasn't normal behavior for a software consultant, or any sane person for that matter. I've seen a couple of security haunting the halls, jump at their own shadow. It's funny when you actually see it, but a little disturbing too. None of us on Security three clearance ever seemed to sleep well, and people always snap at each other for the weakest reasons. Even during lunch, when most of the staff seemed to be in the best mood. We were just a bunch of high strung, jumpy people. It never stuck me as normal in the first place. It wasn't getting any better around here.

I moved the cursor to the Send button, but hesitated. Would this guy even show up? Did I want him too? So far my efforts had been in vain. Eventually, someone would take the bait. I couldn't be sure someone already did. I thought they did but, I hope to god I was wrong. Just another patient. That's all I ever thought of. I was being paranoid.

I clicked the Send icon and watched the annoying little loading icon appear. A little hour glass. Who still used—

"Who's in here?"

The door at the front of the room creaked on its hinges. I jerked towards the fence at my shoulder, and strained to peer through the small gap in the shelves of computer hardware. Someone couldn't be looking for me already. Most likely a curious technician announcing his arrival. I jerked back to the laptops bright screen and hit the delete button, but all the good that would do me. I had already hit the Send button! I'd have better luck hitting Num Lock. I settle with shutting the computer down, by folding it down and shove it away as if that'd help. I spun around on the soft computer chair and watch the open gate for a long time. Just waiting for some to enter so I can greet them, look casual. The room is silent, no one ever comes in. It's only the discarded computers puffing hot vapor, and myself.

I wrap my arms around my midsection and stand, feeling a little silly with my panic. Someone might be looking for me, and when I failed to show myself they went elsewhere. I moved beside the wall of tiny lights gleaming in the computer towers, and approach the edge of the gate. As I peer just over the fence corner, the figure at the door whirls back surprised by my sudden appearance. He's dressed smart in a white collar shirt, blue slacks, and at his neck I can see the edge of his thermal undershirt.

"Park?" He stops just outside the door and tilts his head toward me, as if he didn't expect me to be here at all. "They've paged for you three times already," he said, and gestured off with his thumb. "There's something urgent at the engine."

I hesitate when I reach the doorway and him. The Engine. The Morphogenic Engine. I repeat it a few times in my head. I hate the way it sounds.

"I… must not have heard." My voice trails off as the intercom echoes through the hall, for what must be the fourth time in five minutes.

"Waylon Park, employee one-four-six-six, report to the Morphogenic Engine monitoring immediately."

I sigh and shake my head as I exit the room, but make sure to take the door and shut it after me.

"What are you doing here anyway?" the guy that found me asks. He straightens up and crosses his arms over his chest. "I thought you were just a software guy."

I shrugged but didn't extend on the conversation. He seemed appeased by this, and let me go without an explanation. I didn't recognize him, he might've come down from the top floor and wouldn't be around for much longer. If I saw him again I'd make it a point to learn his name.

The white corridor and blinding white walls stretched before me. The ceiling was carved of natural stone, and what comprised the walls in this section was glossed cinderblock. A few steel doors dotted the walls on either side, most advertise their harsh message Restricted Area, and was locked with a magnet card reader. Yellow caution tape lay beside short rails set on the floor, barricades to keep the numerous trollies of supplies from sliding into the pristine white walls. I adjust my glasses but recall their not my tinted pair, I could take them off until I reached the Morphogenic wing. But I decide not to, I'm in a hurry and I don't want to be seen fumbling around when I enter the chamber.

Two of the scientists responsible for half the research of the facility stand to the side of the hall muttering a portion of a conversation I listen to as I step by. "Parts per million, yeah. But those are precursors to precursors. I'm worried about losing antiapoptotics." Neither one looks human, garbed in protective clothing and specialized masks to shield them from the experiments. They barely sound human, what they're saying barely skims the English language.

"One ninety isn't bad. The Doctor was predicting assembly by one fifty." I slow my steps as I move by them, curious of the material they debate over. Advanced research. It was a rare day to see these guys out of hardware. Blue was their uniform color, blue and gray. And custom designed respirators, and specialized shielding goggles for their eyes.

"We're not being given enough information to trust Wernicke's predictions." I had heard about this Dr. Wernicke, but never actually saw the guy. I never asked about him, since only the doctors ever mentioned him and maybe the rare occasion that security was on about something. There was a lot of action happening in the background that I was fine having nothing to do with.

"He's been right so far." I paused at the clear Plexiglas door as the shielding hissed apart, inviting me into a new room. It was impossible to decide which one was speaking, both were wearing respirators that distorted their voices.

"I just want to know we're inventing something other than shiny new cancers." I stepped fully into the room, and the doors wisp shut at my back. I catch the last section of the conversation about stress and capillaries, and decide I'm better off not knowing.

The room I've entered is a small security checkpoint, and holding chamber for some materials on hold for use. Across from the doorway I've entered through, a sets of tanks has been pressed into the corner, one large canister encircled by a few short and thin gray containers. I glance along the white walls, white desk to my left and a guard seated before a monitor. Not far from his position, another of security detail stands before a set of gray doors. The guard stationed before the doors is bored, he's focused on the man at the computer and pays me little mind.

The security situated at the desk, and probably thankful he's sitting, slips the mouse across the table, scanning files or camera feed. He paused to addresses me. "You're Waylon Park, aren't you?" he asks. I'm surprised he recognized me, but he might've been checking the camera feeds hunting for me rather ask the other techs.

"Yeah." I moved across the room, to the double doors set on the right. I didn't need to get wrapped up explaining myself. As if control was listening, the intercom echoed through the chiseled halls requesting my attention to the Morphogenic lab. That was how many times now?

"Why weren't you answering the page?" he asks. As if I'm have five minutes to spare, to remind him how it doesn't help when control goes by employee identification numbers. "I'll tell them you're coming."

"Thank you," I murmured. If I could help it, I didn't want to waste a lot of time with the Engine. I didn't know what they needed, maybe another debugging. Those were at least fun and easy. I Pushed the door open and pulled it shut behind me. Two researcher were in the corridor, still on shift and dedicated to keeping in full view of their caretakers.

"How about you?" The one with the clipboard gave pause to glance my way. I thought I knew him by name, but dressed as he was I wouldn't bother with a passing greeting. They were idle but preoccupied.

"Going back to Leadville to pick up Jane, then we're heading out to the lake."

"That sounds all right." Even as I moved by them, it was near impossible to discern which one was speaking. The way their voices hit the odd natural stone that surrounded us, kept sounds from echoing too much. The full facial mask and respirator was what made identification difficult, it made it tricky deciding what they were looking at or who they were talking to.

"I didn't think I'd miss her this much." His arms were set on his hips and he didn't seem to be doing much, but overseeing work. "It's the patients," he went on. "You start to realize they haven't seen a woman or a child in… shit, years now. Right?"

It's easy to forget these facts when you've been submersed in work. Most the staff try and stay busy, keep their minds preoccupied. All of it part of the stress. Over time built up, and it was typical that someone would suddenly snap. Usually the guards, stuck on patrol or stationed to keep level two clearance from wandering around the sub levels.

"How long's it been since you're seen Jane?" his voice is softer, sympathetic. It's deceiving despite his stature. I pause before the corridor turns and kneel down to tie my shoe.

"Three weeks now?"

He scoffed behind his mask and glanced up from the clipboard. "That's nothing."

I had to redo my shoelace after I knotted it wrong. They sometimes said it was hard when women were allowed on Mount Massives soil, but now it was unbearable. The situation was difficult to adjust to for the first few weeks, especially if you had someone waiting for you. Even prisons had at least one woman on duty, or you would leave at the end of the day and that would be it. We were isolated up in the Mountains of Colorado, and those of us on high level clearance were stuck in residence, and prohibited from outside contact. We couldn't speak to anyone outside the facility or go anywhere. I've heard of a few guys that have been on residence for more than half a year. Introverts, eccentrics. Maybe I was categorizing them, but I'd seen one of them occasionally during breakfast and they always had this ghostly detached expression. None of them were much for talk with level three Clearance.

"You serious," he asked, after the other man's scoff. "You got a girlfriend of something?"

"I'm married." The scratching he made on the paper and clipboard were audible as he spoke.

"How long since you seen her?"

"Honestly?" The clipboard noises pause, as the speaker gave moment to actually think. "I'm not even sure."

I picked myself up and proceeded around the white chiseled bend in the corridor. At the end was another of security poised before caution tape, and cinderblock walls of a near bluish hue. Above the right side, a camera rotated, capturing all activity that occurred before the thick blast doors. The guard gestured to me as I approached, eager to move my progress along.

"Christ, Waylon," he hissed. "Hurry up, they're waiting on you." I had a tense moment to dwell if maybe he had seen me perched further down the hall, tying my shoe over and over? I didn't remark over it, just hurried by when the guard stepped aside.

He said something else, but it was lost when the large doors ground open. My attention went to the room now open before me, warm air slipped across my neck and face as it escaped into the cool corridor. It was then that I realized how chilled my hands were, and I nervously fumbled with my knuckles trying to crack the joints. The room within was full of activity, it was visible from a glance. Men moved in slow motion, minds paced at two thousand words a second, thirty syllables every two point nine seconds. Even without the Engine, the monstrous machine on the other side of those windows, the energy was a erratic. A wild snake charged with current, tangling over and over itself while scales popped off its convulsing muscles.

I adjusted my glasses as I stepped inside. It was a short enclosed walkway into the main chamber, the walls on either side struggled to pump a meager amount of recycled air into the entire room. The ceilings were naturally high, reinforced with thick metal beams with more vents and pipes running the length of the room. Many of these 'hamster tubes' shielded wiring and kept everything insulated. Half the flooring was grated to assist with airflow and keep the confined chambers from gathering stale air, but all of these architectural benefits hardly assisted in making this chamber bearable. Buried hundreds of feet underground in cold limestone, most of us clothed in long sleeve shirts or thermals to ward of hypothermia. Then there was this place. I was once told hell could be a beautiful place.

Through the Plexiglas I could barely make out the shape through the mist. The tri-heptagon surface of metal and lights, steam huffed through the spaces each panel was set in to mix with the cool air. Cables as thick as my arms ran from the top of this contraption, and draped down somewhere out of sight, somewhere into the floors or walls. Chiseled walls that had at one time been white were now an ugly gray, almost black. As though the walls of the mountains interior were becoming chard computer hardware, like the people that were dragged through daily. Behind the Plexiglas, away from the heat of the machine, safe from its smoldering anger, the technicians and doctors worked bent over long counters lined with computers and screens. One or two bodies huddled before the sharp flicker of a screen, each dressed in either a spotless white coat of dark blues. In the limited light of the room, some of these people seemed to meld into the computer equipment stuffed against the walls as though they had always been here. Eyes sunken and dark, brows scarred by thoughtful lines, dangerous thoughts tugging into their skin. I stopped at the threshold of the room staring, the air in my lungs stale.

"Ah, Park." The first technician on the side said, as I paused. He looked up from the clipboard he held, pen in hand. His face buried in goggles and a respirator. If he hadn't addressed me by name, I would have kept walking. "You're cutting it close, next patient's incoming and the Arterial Spin's still dark. We need you at the front."

Patient. They're bringing a patient in. God damnit. I flexed my hands beside my legs, and felt the skin roll over my tendons and bone. Did they do this on purpose? No. I should've been paying attention, they paged me five times. I was busy at the time. They didn't like excuses, but they wanted results and they wanted them now.

The room beyond the short entrance was large. A walls of screens and terminals, dedicated to the Engine. The Morphogenic Engine. On one side of the room the bulk of technology was reserved for the Engines functions and readings, communications were linked directly to those on the ground floor at the contraptions base. On the far side, hardware was interwoven and cross connected over several networks. Software hardwired to work as a mediator of the Engine and the people that were brought through here. Screens displayed what I recognized as thermal imaging, brain scans, and an assortment of over readings I knew no name for. I didn't think there could be an accurate medical term devised yet, for half of the systems they worked on. They called it a scientific breakthrough, the cutting edge of technology and the advancements in medicine.

I got the shivers when I thought about it.

I glanced at the guard beside a desk as I moved towards the rooms front. He wasn't pressed up against the desks back, he was more in the center of the walkway and I had to creep by him. He followed my movement with his eyes. I hated when they did that. But what else did they have to do around here?

"From yesterday we've got one at thirteen twenty-one oh-five. Another at seventeen forty-four thirty-one. And a big one at nineteen thirty eight oh-two." These were the physicians at the side, going through the patients previous history, I think. Spikes of something. Dreams. They were always going on about dreams, and I would sometimes catch chatter about how they wanted the patients to see something, or I'd get the vibe they wanted them to experience something. It was always casual conversation, even during work like this. They talked about the patients like they were paste tense, already dead. To them, they were. It always made me uneasy. They doctors never seemed to notice.

"Let's see… log has the first two as guided dreams. Classified as: childhood, sexual with reptile imagery."

I stood behind the guys at the front terminal, working over the screens and muttering about the patient. I didn't really catch his name, I was trying to follow the medical/technical terms that they used. I did try, I was curious to know what they were working on. I wasn't a doctor, I was a technician. Hell, first sign of a cold and I was at the doctors office. I trust they'd know what was wrong with me over my own judgment. Beneath the Engine I could see more physicians and another tech guy, dressed in blue and wearing a tie, fiddling with the terminal. They were mingling around one of the bulbous pods, wires and thick tubes hung from its side. Only the cables that went into the capsules base was for the computers readings, anything not connected yet, soon would be.

"Ah, for fuck's sake. They've got Gluskin out of his cell." He wore blue smocks and sounded unimpressed, as he spoke with the other technicals dressed in lab coat and smocks. This fellow, Steve, he and I have worked beside the other on and off, but had yet to exchanged names formally. I didn't like him, but the feeling was mutual without the snide comments behind each other's back. "Page him again, we need this Park guy in here now. Tell him he's got fifteen seconds to keep his job."

Right, I needed to fix this. Without a word I slipped over to the quiet desktop to the right, reserved for me and already prepped for C++. They had two monitors set up for convenience, but I never needed the second screen. It just distracted me. The one screen displayed in large read words

SYSTEM ERROR CODE 16

Along with the code malfunctions and possible troubleshoot commands it recommended to correct the issue. This would work if the whole damn system wasn't custom built, and programmed by a mathematical moron that still used UNIX.

This wouldn't take too long. I had to get back, make sure the laptop did shut down. It would still have the tether to the network code I used, and I needed to erase that browser history and cover it up. Tedious, but easy enough.

"Park. Finally. Where have you been?" I didn't answer, just gave a mild wave over my shoulder as I pulled the keyboard over. Spit and frustration. That's what I always imagine these public keyboards smelled like. I didn't like communion keyboards. I didn't even like going to the library to fill out applications, I always carried a mild spray disinfectant. But, he already said I had five seconds. "The Functional Imaging interface isn't talk to the ASL. We've got a patient thirty seconds out and we're blind inside his head."

"I'll hurry then," I said. Just to make him happy, or defuse his irritation a bit. I put in the long code, requesting a full read up of the program.

A voice strained through a respirator, with that odd metallic ring in it. He was further away, on the other side of my supervisor. "I could call in to the chamber, ask them to delay… ?" Oh please, don't do that. Are you stupid?

"No," Steve denied. And I let out a small sigh. Good. "I don't need another performance evaluation," he went on. "Mr. Park here is going to have us up and running before we even know it. Right, Mr. Park?"

"Yehh," I mumbled. The long script C+ was already loading up and I scanned through some of the information that was given. It was none important jargon, you couldn't get anything from it, but it helped pass the time. Script. Script. Script.

The error note was bright crimson, and I fixed my glasses to help alleviate the awful color coupled with the terrible lighting. I got that these understood that these guys didn't get out into sun that often, and the lights used precious power and heated up the cables, but some of us have a hard time seeing tiny text on a bright screen. I tapped my finger on the keyboard impatiently working on a proper line code to patch this. Make the camera transmit. Nothing wrong with the camera, computer thought there was a problem. It didn't want to read the image. I could make it read the image, and transfer with a bypass. Trick it into seeing And recording. This would all be well, unless some idiot came through later and changed out the True for a False.

"Are we happy Mr. Park?" Steve asked. I glanced at his face, worn with lines and no indication of humor in his eyes. What sort of question was that, here of all places?

"_Yes I'm happy. Can you not see the big grin slapped on my face_?" But I say nothing. I turn back to the screen and put in the script patch. My cheesy sweater vest is damp from the sweat, it's taking a little longer than I thought it would. I read the long code back to myself as I put it in, mouthing the keys and figures that line up. Equation forming, molding it into the solution to make the problem True. I'm rereading the errors above. By the sound of it I won't have the time to trouble shoot if the code is misread.

"Uh, Steve?" The voice through the respirator strained to be heard. "fMRI is still dark."

"You're doubting our friend Mr. Waylon Park," Steve gushed, with a mild tone of mock. "Which I consider more than unkind to his programming skill and considerable dedication to the Murkoff corporation."

It was no big secret that I had my reservations for what we were doing here, but I never spoke them aloud. People pick up on these undertones. But in Murkoff's eyes I was valuable, I got my work down quick and efficiently and that was what mattered. In the beginning I was warned to keep my head down, keep silent. "For _Your_ safety." They had a method of making it sound like there were outside groups that would find you if they got wind of your work with Murkoff. But, I think most of us that worked with Murkoff knew that it was the company's way of keeping its employees compliant.

Compiling Morphogenic Engine Software

I erased and redid the last few figures. That would have been bad. Then Run the program. It was now a matter of waiting to see if the code was accepted. The loading bar filled up slowly. If I stared at it too long, it might start to run backwards. I pulled the front of my shirt from my chest and rolled my sleeves back a bit. It seemed warmer than normal in here.

While the anxiety crept through my veins, I adjusted the keyboard at my fingertips. I turned to Steve, "It'll just load now—"

"Fuck me," he snapped, turning to somewhere distant beyond the Plexiglas. "They're bringing him in." I turned to see where he was looking, but the second monitor was in the way. It was only confirming the script loading as valid. I check the main screen, and find it hasn't reached fifty percent yet. Damn, why—

"—knew it was coming," a high voice shrieked, muffled by the plastic box we were in. Safe. "Your filthy fucking machines. You fucking machines!" The steps to climb up to reach level with the control room are directly across from me, and I can see clearly armed guards escorting the thrashing man across the Morphogenic chamber. I'm no longer interested in the gradual movement of the bar. I'm not thinking of equations or running script, I'm not thinking of anything. Except the man on the floor screaming, fighting. Fighting with everything he has in him, and screaming at the top of his lungs. He has to be screaming until his lungs bleed, if I can hear him through the Plexiglas. "No! No, not again. No! No! Jack-booted fucks, I know what you've been…"

I turn and look to Steve's impassive face, just watching the scene unfold. There are guards down there, with guns. There's no way the patient can get away. But the cold detachment in Steve's eyes… I'll never get used to people with _That_ expression. Not seeing the person. I don't know what he sees. What could you possibly see? What are you thinking?

But I don't know psychology. I don't read people well, I'm a little naïve in that regard. These matters of relation in the mind, though. I'm satisfied in the not knowing.

"Help! Help me! Help me, they're going to—" I look away, to the guard standing beside the clear door shielding, that lead into the Morphogenic chamber itself. I'm relieved by a more human reaction from the guard, uncertain as he witnesses the action on the floor below. His imposing stature is no longer projected, and he leans toward the door uncertain if he should go in, yet he doesn't know how to access the floor. The door is locked via terminal code, and none of us will open the door. He looks to the technicians at the monitors displaying patient and Morphogenic synchronization, but none of them seems flustered by the commotion. The guard must be new. "— Rape! Rape!"

I pretend to watch the last of the bar fill across the screen when someone starts screaming "Grab him." "Loose." I blink and see a shirtless man throw himself up the steps and collide with the Plexiglas box. He's well-built physically, but veins on his arms and neck look unnatural. Exposed

He's smashes his palms to the surface, and exhales a sharp sound that hardly sounds human. "Help me! Help!"

I've staggered out of my chair, backing away from him. "Don't let them do this! Don't let them!" He continues to beat his fists on the glass, screaming. One of the tactical security is already hiking up the steps to take him back, but he notices me. I'm certain that wild look in he has is set on me alone, and no one else. I move away. I don't want him to look at me. I don't want to feel responsible.

"You!" he howls. His last shred of desperation tears from his throat, agony and terror tighten in his eyes. One of the tactical guards wraps an arm over his chest and struggles to drag him back. The man breaks free, insane, desperate. He looks to me. "I know you can stop this!" I'm backing away, as more guards reach the flat to loop their arms over his. "You have to help me! You have to… "

I nearly tumble backwards when my foot comes down on the wheel of the chair being pressed back in my retreat. I don't want to do this. I don't want to feel like I've condemned a man. I can't I—

"Hey! Calm yourself." The guard from the door. He's come over and pressed his hand to my chest when I whip to him, shocked by his sudden appearance. I back away and put my arms up, not wanting to be taken. I don't want to be taken where the patients have gone. "This is a high security—"

"It's all right, agent." Steve comes to my rescue. I flinch his way, nearly hitting him in the face. Steve is unconcerned and takes my arms, gently after the other and pressed them back to my side. "Mr. Park was just surprised. I'm sure he's still calm and eager to finish his work." Steve sort of brushes the guard from our presence, the same way a child might shoo a fly. Then, he gestures to the chair and takes my shoulder, pushing me towards the blue fabric. "Take you seat."

I can see beyond the lading screen, completed, that the man is still fighting his suppressors. _You're in too deep_, I thought. _How can anyone hope to escape when you're this deep, in this place?_

I try and say thank you or some other word, but manage only this odd squeak. Steve's hand leaves my shoulder when I put myself back at the terminal, and creep up to the screens. The code and script have been incorporated into the program. I would…. Uhh…. What did I do next?

I keep glancing beyond the screen and the data, to the Morphogenic Engine. The terminals, the guys working down there. I don't see the patient anymore, and everything has restored to the calm state it is usually in. That unnatural state. I can't stop looking at the odd figures and movement on the screens, the _Static_ it's been called. I sometimes dream about them. Sometimes I dream about them, and something else is there. Some dark shadow from my childhood. Only kids are scared of the dark.

"Quickly, Mr. Park," Steve says, when I've failed to move. "A head will need to roll if perfusion monitoring is not active when they put him in the engine."

The Spin Labeling. A fancy word for program monitoring. Simple. Give me a moment. I fumble my fingers across the keyboard, getting the strokes in mind before I resume the actual command prompt. Activate it, give it the right sequence and we'd be good.

Steve began to count down, "Five Seconds. Four. Three… "

I sighed, and gave the last sequence then enter. I jerked when the monitor I was watching displayed the interior of the capsule, and the patient.

"Arterial Spin Labeling is back online," the man in the respirator says.

"Ah. Good then," Steve replies. He's behind me.

I stare at the screen, of the man with his odd undercut. His lips and nose already red. He twitches and moans, it looks awful. Cables jammed down his throat, needles jammed in his shoulder and stomach. I hear an audible creak and when I look down, I realize I've gripped the edges of the keyboard and was trying to strangle it. When I raise my eyes back to the patient, his head is already bobbing and it looks as though he's gone to sleep. I watch as red spreads along the side of his face and neck, ugly welts, like burns. I couldn't think of why else they could be, they appear so quickly.

"Positioning imaging planes…."

The patients head jerks a few times more as he succumbs to the chemicals, or whatever they pump into him. Could be gas, could be injections. They put them in the pods, and fill them with terrible things. It's not right, it's immoral. But I can't say no.

"You're finished, Mr. Waylon Park," Steve says, as he braces an arm across my chest and to my shoulder. Steve glances to where my eyes are, and pushes on my shoulder and blocks my view of the screen. "You can leave."

The forceful tone he takes crushes any curiosity that was in my blood, and I push away from the terminal. At my back Steve, says. "Don't expect anything but honesty in my review of your performance."

Who cares about performance reviews? Only the doctors. I stick my hands in my pockets as I head towards the back of the chamber.

"You have the dream therapy logs?"

Going too deep.

"What are these spikes?"

Waiting in the mountains.

I stop at the corridor that led from the room and turned back, trying to see the capsule. I wanted to see what was happening, what was it they were trying to do? Far as I could see they were accomplishing nothing. I never saw these people that went to the Engine. I never saw what happened to them. And I wasn't doing much about it at this rate.

"You need to exit the room, Sir." I looked to the guard beside the corridor, arms crossed and glaring. I frowned as I turned and walked out of the room.

In all the excitement, I had nearly forgotten about the laptop. I nodded to the next security figure standing outside as I walked by. He watched my progress as they usually did. I quickened my pace when I made it around the bend. The doctors that had been conversing in the hall had gone off, probably went off to help with the Engines work. Their chatter was not missed, and I wanted to sit in my quiet corner to mull over things. I was still on shift and couldn't go back to my room for a proper rest, nor could I get away from the white chiseled walls of these cold corridors. I wanted to forget what I saw, move away from the sensation. I hate feeling guilty or responsible. It wasn't my fault.

I looked away for a second.

I shut the door behind me and paused in the room with the two security. Both looked my way when the door shut. The one on the monitor was still doing his work, moving the cursor and keeping observation. Behind the desk, on the wall at his back was the logo for C Block.

I wanted to say something, anything, to cut the cold silence. I just couldn't. Just couldn't bring myself to open my mouth.

I gave a weak greeting as I crossed to the clear sliding doors. The hydraulics hissed as they parted, and I entered into another cold, sterile, white hall. The cold air was a nice change from the warmth of the Morphogenic chamber, my skin was starting to dry out but the dampness held to my back like an unwanted glove. I pulled at the edges of my sweater vest as I moved to the end of the hall, the walls mercifully silent for once. I hated the way this place vibrated, how even the air seemed alive. After a time you get used to it, but left to your own devices without a distraction and it would slither through your skin again. We never discussed it, but there was always that air of unease. It was just paranoia, and the physicians said it was perfectly natural.

No. It wasn't. A lot of what they said was a flat out lie. You couldn't even tell when they were telling the truth anymore.

I stopped when I reached the door at the halls end, on my left. I watched it, waited, biding my time. I felt tremors roll up and down my arms, and that dampness returned to the back of my neck. I hated this place, but I needed the work. Bills to pay. You couldn't survive without money. I was pushed into this. I had things that needed to be fixed. Mended. I was trying to do the right thing.

I remember leaving the door closed.

* * *

><p><strong>Massive thanks to peeps whom have been waiting to long for these chapters. As always, I own none of the characters. I just struggle to portray them as accurately as possible, given what little information is available from game. Good luck on finals, and don't stress the big stuff<strong>


	3. Chapter 3

Resignation

I thought about it carefully.

Someone would be inside the room. I couldn't think of who it could be, I was the only one that came to this side of C block. The other rooms were locked, except for this one. It would only be natural that someone would know about the only locked room and go inside to get away from the drone of people, doctors, scientists. I took a small breath and reached forward, pushing the door a bit. It swung open on air, quiet and calm. The interior of the room, silent as a grave. The twitter of the spare computer towers on idle echo back to me. I glanced over the shelves, trying to see through the gaps of CBs and discarded walkie-talkies, spare keyboards. Under the bright lamps I could make out nothing, contrasted against the darkened shades of the rooms restricted area.

"Hello?" I choked a bit, and try again. "Hello? Someone there?" I waited, but no sound. I leaned back and looked back through the corridor, toward the clear doors of C Block's security point. I saw no one there. I knew the guards were still there, probably making comments about my awful sweater vest. I liked it. It kept me warm. However now. Now it was too warm.

I step into the room and listen, struggling to perceive what my eyes and ears are blind to. A strange sensation envelopes me. Excitement. Fear. It's strong and solid, and real. The air has suddenly become too warm, like I'm back in the Morphogenic chamber, unable to escape. I say nothing as I moved forward, deeper into this cloak of dread and danger. I cannot turn back now, can't turn away from what I have started. I have to do something, but running now might be too late.

Even before I turn the corner of the makeshift fence, before my eyes adjust to the dark, I can envision him. A dark silhouette amid a halo of light, an impression in my eyes. I thought I was seeing something from the Engine. Caught something from the screen and just fabricated the shape in my mind and no one is there. I was safe.

My realty crumbles apart the moment he begins speaking.

"Somebody's been telling stories outside of class."

I stood gawking for second or so, at this man perched at my desk. The laptop is there, sitting innocently beside his elbow. He was leaned back on the desk, one leg crossed his thigh. Even in the dark back of the room, his eyes somehow caught the light from the screen behind him. Physics couldn't explain how. The email I had composed was laid out for all eyes to see. My words, my admission, stolen somehow. Where did I go wrong? My mind screams. What did I MISS?

I recall now. I blocked it when I had stepped through the gate, because I couldn't go back. I would lead him there. I was spooked, in a hurry. I hit a few keys blindly then shut the laptop and shoved it away.

But I didn't close out of my documents. I didn't cover my trail. I left it open and idle for much too long. Enough for even a high school hacker to blaze through and tear apart my encryption. I—

I fucked up so bad.

My first instinct was run. I twisted about and charged through the gate, running smack into a guard that had been sneaking up on me. I plowed my hands into him, and he thrust his fists against my sweater. "On the floor!" he snarled. He knotted his grip in the fabric and threw me backwards, again and again until I was back in the dark little closet. "Down! Hands where I can see them!"

I put my hands under me, had to try and get myself up. Somehow, had to get away. Somehow.

The security agent kneels over me, looped an arm around me and raised me to my feet. I wanted to push away from him, but he latched his hands over my upper arms and threw me against the wall. I haven't the capacity to brace myself and hit. Shoulder and head. My vision fades a portion and I see the ribbons, the twisting distortions of grays and white. In the mountain.

My legs fold up under me and I fall. It hurts, my head pounds with the tempo of thunder, I can hear blood gushing in my ears. Nothing's broke. Not yet, I'm sure.

"Mr. Waylon Park, consulting contract 8208," says the man. I recognize him, I know who he is. Him of all people, Christ. I look up from my ratty shoes, as he slides the laptop off the desk and walks over. He holds it before him like a great tome, as if he's reading my entire life history off its gleaming screen. "Software engineer with a level three security clearance." With his face fully illuminated in the laptops damning light, he looks ghostly and pale. The thick veil of danger and heat constricts my chest and I struggle to breath through it, keep my thoughts clear. The security, the people I passed when I was returning to the side of C Block, stand within the gate watching. The insane notion that I should beseech them for help, talk my way out of this hits me hard. I stall under the blow, unable to say anything but turn my eyes back to my supervisor. He leans over me, holding the laptop a little out from him.

"Graduated cum laude from Berkley, but still somehow not smart enough to realize the last thing a fly ought to do in a spider's web is wiggle." He lets the laptop go and I jerk my feet back as it hits the floor, the screen twists off the back and the keys scatter on white stone. With a last pulse of electrical current, the screen goes dark and with it, my convictions.

I watch it briefly, trying to decide if I had options. If there was anyway I could get out of this. I licked my lips and swallowed the saliva in my throat, then looked back to the man in the suit. Jeremy Blair.

He hated me. From day one he hated me. He hated me so much he was willing to kill me to get me out of the way. He was waiting for this, and I gave it to him. Oh…god.

He set his hands to his thighs and leaned over. "Yet, somehow dumb enough to think that a borrowed laptop, onion router, and firewall patch would be enough to fool the world's leading supplier of biometric security." They were baiting me. All this time, they knew. They just didn't know WHO it was. They found me. They found me now.

"Stupid, Mr. Park." Jeremy raised a hand to the side of his skull and tapped, gently. Emphasizing from where we usually make good, life long decisions. Life long. My breath came tighter, wheezing through my nose as I struggled to not make a sound. I didn't want… to sound as pitiful as I looked. Subconsciously, I pressed myself back into the wall a little more. The walls of the room were closing in, warping in my eyes as my panic escalated. I felt sick to my stomach, and suddenly very cold. It was so cold now. "More than stupid," Jeremy went on. "In fact, that was crazy."

I… uhh. Rumors. I heard of Rumors. People would go missing. I don't know where, no one every elaborated. But there was talk. Delusions. Some of the staff suffered delusions, or saw what they shouldn't. It was… sketchy. If they thought you needed help, they encouraged it. What Murkoff said, and what it did, was two opposites. You were sick, they would help—they made it worse. You wanted to out, they said that was fine—people were 'reassigned.' Sometimes it made sense. People around here were jumpy, paranoid, they needed help. I wanted… to help. That's all I wanted, to make this right.

But I fucked it up. I fucked up.

"I'm afraid we're going to have, to have you committed." Jeremy reached over and took the glasses that had fallen sideways over my nose. "Mr. Park," he said, and straightened up. "Will you willingly submit to forced confinement?"

"You can't," I whispered. "You can't do this." My words die in my throat. This isn't happening. This can't be happening.

"Did you hear that, agent?" Jeremy hummed, turning to the security detail that stood beside him. The guards have guns, they're ready for me to run. I have nowhere to go. They could throw my down, break my body, crush my brain with a well-placed foot. Why would they need guns? I looked to the agent, arms crossed staring down on me. I want to plead. I want to ask, beseech help. Why won't you help me?

The agent swings to Jeremy, "He said 'Yes,' Mr. Blair."

They're really doing this. They really are. Everything that I have grown to love, to tolerate, is gone. Dust. Memories fade, sensations. I become numb. I can't do this, I won't.

"Great," Jeremy said, with a pleasant smile. His face brightens and he raises his hand, indicating my pathetic shape huddled on the ground. "Oh, and… Did I just hear Mr. Waylon Park volunteer for the Morphogenic Engine program?"

"That's what I heard, Mr. Blair."

No.

The Engine. The _Morphogenic_ Engine. No. God, no! They don't intend to kill me, they're only goal is to take my brain and body apart, until there's nothing left. Nothing left human! What happens to the people that have seen the Engine. NO!

"Please. Jeremy." I'm creeping along the wall, towards that corner. I'll fight them if I have to, make them kill me. They won't take me alive. If I'm left to live what remains of me will want to die. I want to—

What am I saying? I want to die? I'll let them kill me. I'll let myself die? If give in. I'll disappear. Everything inside of me that is me, will disappear. Then Jeremy Blair will not have to worry or hate me ever again. And that's what he wants. That's his goal.

"That is brave, indeed, Waylon," Jeremy said. "The Murkoff Corporation and the onward march of science both appreciate your bravery and sacrifice. Maybe you could administer Mr. Park here a light anesthetic?" Jeremy didn't look to the security, but he did motion me with a hand. And stepped back.

The unarmed guard stepped forward and pulled back a fist. I saw it coming a mile away. "Gladly."

I fell back against the wall and put up my hands. Block, protect my skull. Don't let them KILL ME! The agent plowed through my arms and collided his knuckles with my eye. The ribbons, the gate, the walls flew away and swung back. I felt my body fall over, thoughts get scattered to the distant corridors of my mind. What's happened? I put motion back in my body, give it commands to follow. I have to get my head up. But I've fallen over, and my will is lost somewhere dark in my mind.

I think about the man, the patient I watched get stuffed into a capsule. What's become of him now?

My vision clears, and my arms thrash above my head as I sputter on my back. I've forgotten to get away, I must first be upright. But I'm thrashing, broken and confused and screaming, as the guard that hit me sweeps over my face. He has something, I can't figure out what it is. A sturdy, hard, blunt object? I put an arm up to block the downward swing he's brought, but it crashes through my arm and makes contact with my head. My body goes still, I can't feel my arms or anything as my head is crushed between the object and miles of interior mountain stone. The gray comes back, the truck, images swimming off the screen. People are there staring at me. Stares that judge, stares that want so much from me. Hungry dark stares.

People… should not have that sort of look on their face.

I gag on my tongue as I spit up salty thick fluid. Am I dead yet? Have they decided to kill me instead? Don't die, please don't die. I twist my head and spit on the floor. My surroundings come into focus, and I hate how I am still conscious after that blow. I see shoes, legs. My body doesn't respond as I lay there gawking at the leg as it draws back.

Then I am swallowed up by the images. They become me, and I exist in their world. They are all I know.

I feel my breathing. Slow, steady, inhale, exhale. Gates, elevator gate. Then the skull, the ribbons. I feel it inside my thoughts making a slow march through my brain, there's no way I can stop it. I imagine everything in my mind being erased, then rewritten. One pulse after the next, each twist of the image. The blossoms. They invade everything that I once held dear, until there's nothing but void and white, indescribable ugly imprints. Focus sometimes comes back, if only briefly. It's too painful to bear, bright lights and things being done to me. I have no power to stop it. Everything is out of control. My life is beyond me, beyond the glass.

I'm begging, pleading for the man inside to do something. "Help me! You have to help!" But he only stares back, frightened and confused. He must be new.

Arms loop over my chest and shoulder, dragging me back to the dark, and the images. The images swallow me alive, and it is too painful to fight. To struggle to the surface of conscious and thrash about, lungs raw and voice hoarse. I can't get out the meaning of the pain, or how I want it to stop. Then I'm drowning in the sea of gray. Of warped, blooming wounds, bleeding out and crusting over.

My body seizes up and my brain begins to die. I can't feel my heart thudding in my chest. It all becomes still and terribly cold, the world I had fought through becomes distant. I watch myself, rigid with eyes white staring at a screen full of lies and pain. I want to leave this place, find somewhere warm where I don't have to worry about the terrible things they'll do to my body. A dark place where there are no images that twist in my mind, no hands to beat me bloody. I want to sleep.

But I take a breath. Then another. The vibrations in my chest begin soft, gradual at first. Then stronger and stronger. Until I'm dragged back without contest, with no protest. I breath deep and it hurts, it hurts to fill my lungs with air and continue. To force life back into my unresponsive limbs that are no more me, than I am.

The truck. It was a car. I looked away for a second. I have to remind myself, because I've been judged harshly. They wanted to judge me. Make what they say the Truth. I tried to fight back, but all the good it did me. Us. If I had said "Take everything, leave us alone." Would it have mattered? They wouldn't be satisfied. Revenge is cruel. Revenge is a cold blind tool. But people love it. They paint it on ideas, gather support, then fight with everything they have. Then it's a cycle. A repetitive motion.

There was noise and bright light. I can't remember what happened after that. Only that the panic was in my head, and I needed to find someone. Someone that was riding with me. Coming back from soccer practice. It was a perfect day, a beautiful day. Nothing should go wrong on a day like that.

But it did.

I hear the scratching clawing at my head, into my brain. Deep into my darkest thoughts. Ribbons and skulls, X-rays and Rorschach's. Every beat of my heart, every breath I take. They get worse and worse. I remember what's happened, where I am. It's vague, the memory lodged with pain, I rework it over and over in my head until I can see nothing. The man behind the glass, running script, an easy patch. Firewalls that held back nothing, the guy that must be knew. It comes back, and I lurch physically from the flood of emotion. My chest tightens, and I feel the restraints holding me.

The man is curled up on the cold white floor, in the darkest corner. He pleads, he tries to ask the doctors standing around the computers. The ones that pay no mind to him, to the sounds of anguish he generates. I sit in a chair staring at him, unable to do a thing. They'd tied me back, I can't go anywhere.

"He had five cancers." The voice, through a respirator, is somewhere behind me. I have a hard time focusing on the man. My mind, what I'm seeing, can't be processed. It doesn't make sense to me.

"Wernicke wants us at fifteen APCD. None of this matter…" The other voice trails off, as the man begins screaming.

"You! You can't let them do this!" He's trying to get out of the restricted area, through the fenced in back. But the security detail holds his arms as he flails about, like a kid trying to jump over waves. We'd taken the kids to the beach. "Stop this! Help me!"

I want to rest my head somewhere, but its pinned back and I can't move it. I can only stare as the images distort. They burrow behind my eyes until I only see white outlines, and dark silhouettes gliding behind the mess in my head. The scene evaporates little by little, and I become aware of the room I'm in. The terrible room, with the Engine of nightmares. I renew my screaming, coming from the null state into one of stimuli I cannot take it. I don't remember how to process input – sound, scent, my eyes begin to clear. Where has the patient gone?

I grip at the armrest my hands are under. It's hot in my grip, and I feel my fingers dig painfully over the hard material. I gag on the tubes shoved down my throat. Can't comprehend them, all I can ruminate on is how much I hurt. How painful it is to be alive still.

There's a new sound. One I've never in my life heard before. It's a soft hum that dies, and fades into silence. The scratching of the screen fails all at once. All I can do is gawk at the screen, jaw hanging while the capacity to shut my mouth is beyond my physical power. I breath slower now, calm I think it is. I'm calm, my muscles begin to relax and the agony swells through me causing my eyes to water. I'm not blind. I can still see I can everything.

The rooms walls, the twelve screens, the tripod and the camera. But I cannot move my head or my body, nor do I want to. Thoughts trickle back into my head. Where was I last? A dark space, in the back of a hole. Someplace I had thought was safe. There's no safe place here, on this soil. It's all a lie, an illusion. If you believe what they tell you, you will wind up worse than dead. Somehow, I was still alive. I was close, but not there yet. Not there.

A loud _Crack_ echoes through the small room. I feel I can still hear my shrieks, as though they continue to crash against the hard stone walls. The pressure is released from my wrists and my ankles. My head is free. The sudden return of movement disturbs me greatly, I sway in the chair as I take in my red wrists, my arms. I'm here. I'm still me. Am I?

The images. They scratch at the edges of my peripheral and drag through my vision, leaving distorted groves in my vision. Hot pain slithers through the back of my head to my brow. I moan, turning my head to work away from the impression I see, escape the vertigo they press into my skull. The room I am in is glasses, Plexi. I can see other people, in similar state as I am.

At my left a man hangs over the side of his chair, but his screens. Twelve. They are white, but blank. There's no more scratching, no more Static. He's no better than I am. As the blooming vapors twist in my eyes, it somehow reminds me of the tubes in my throat. They hurt, I don't know if I could remove them, but I try. I choke as I grab at them, that gag reflex. I don't want to throw up, don't have the energy.

"Shhh. Shhhh!" I hear his voice, muffled, and banging. Soft, but frantic banging on something. I remember that sound. The person on my right is further along than I am, already standing. He looks… agitated by something. He attempts to hush me, and stands scanning his chamber over.

The tube slips out with a gush of fluid and bile. I don't know what it was for. I turn to the right as I flop out of the chair, murmuring awful sounds as I clear my throat of what was left of the obstruction. I relish the ability to shut my mouth, and relax my sore jaw. I can see the figure from the room over pressed against the Plexiglas, struggling to get my attention

"You hear that, don't you? Oh… ah…" I take a breath but I can't speak, my throat is too raw. As I turn on my side to face him better, my blood runs cold. I hear it too. I hear it and I've heard it all this time. The images tear through my mind, warped figures, gates, skulls. What I had thought I escaped, was now amplified.

The man gave a screech as his a… shadow tore him backwards. I didn't get a good look, I pushed myself towards the wall and choked on my own tongue as I witnessed, his feet fly through the air. Sounds came, grotesque and terrifying sounds. By some small mercy of some intervention god, the lights went out and the rooms were plunged into darkness. In the endless sea of black I tried to get up and move, but still so weak I fell over and knocked hard metal legs across my side. The Rorschach's enveloped my senses, the skulls splint and bloomed like wild ribbons. They lessened and faded as I lay still and quite for what felt like hours. Maybe it was hours. But the sounds that came from the cells around me, the awful screams and wet noises of blood and organs, of throats and bodies pulled to pieces. I could only envision the hell that was spread around me.

I lay in the dark like a broken child hiding from monsters. If I kept still, it would never find me. If I moved, made a sound, I would be eaten alive. My chest ached as my heart beat against my ribs, I was terrified the sound would alert…. It. Whatever it was. I thought for certain it would pick up my strained breathing.

It never did.

Somewhere in the endless dark my brain shut down. I didn't dream, I might've slipped into shock. But nothing came to me for a long time. Maybe I had absorbed too many of the images. Maybe I couldn't dream anymore. What was it they called it? Dream therapy. Sleep state. Buried so deep. Lost a little bit of us each day. My head pulsed, residual aches that flared like firecrackers behind my eyes, accompanied by an odd taste in the back of my throat. It's like… my brains been nudged around in my skull.

Too much. I had absorbed too much.

I shift a bit, and felt the metal bar that fell over me clank to the floor. It was top heavy, but what— The camera. It was the video camera set up to film me. The notion caused my skin to bristle. The room wasn't cold, it was warm and stuffy and smelled, god it smelled terrible. How long had I been locked in here?

The camcorder becomes a distraction. I sit up, propped against the wall of screens and work to get the camera off the tripod. I know you twist the top, but it was awkward to do it in the heavy black. The camera comes loose in my hand and I set the tripod aside, before I and fumble with the back of the camera, the operations. Cameras are universal, if you already know how to operate them you don't need the instructions. I go through the options, I ignore the segments of film already taken. It's in functions, but I find a night scene option. I set it to default and accidentally look through the visor as I turn the camera to the wall in front of me.

It's blood. The wall is covered with blood, pieces of bone, and intestines. All of it splattered across the Plexiglas, a thick wall of gore suspended in the dull green hue of the night feature. All at once I feel so little and vulnerable. I turn and check the other side, and find much of the same. Black in the green visor, pieces of something that had been a human shortly before. It was surreal. Not very long before, the man had been slumped over in his chair as he recovered from the Engine. There was nothing left of the mess that resembled a corpse.

I'm back in the car, feeling helpless and broken. It was terrible, it happened so fast. A whirlwind of trauma that no one deserved, but somehow I was at fault. I couldn't even open the door.

Oh god, Lisa. I'm sorry, so sorry. Baby, please. I never meant for this to happen. I didn't mean for any of this. No one… no one ever does. LISA.

I curl up in the other side of the cell, against the clear surface of the door. I don't know where everyone is, if that … shadow. Christ, I don't want to think about it. If there's no one around. The air shut down long ago. I'm pressed into the Plexiglas door, the camera in my lap. I have enough mental faculty to keep my breathing slow and steady, I know not to panic. I think I'm as good as dead, but shouting and trying to get attention won't help. It will hasten death in many ways. But if it comes down to it, I think I would like to just go to sleep. I don't know what suffocating is like.

As the air thins, the shapes return. Odd half moons and wings, ribbons twisting through my skull. I press my palms to my ears to hold the sounds off, but they are in my thoughts churning through my brain matter. If I leave this place, if they let me go. Everything will be all right. I'm one of them in a way, I might by lying. This place is full of lies and nightmares.

"You think you're safe in there." A voice. I imagined it, maybe. I look around but I don't see who spoke. But it's dark, and the camera is in my lap. I pull it up and click on the night vision. "Wall flower. Pretty flower." Wha… he calls its flowers? I sit up on my knees as the figure stalks past. I freeze up when he looks right at me, as he strolls by. He's a patient, he must be. He's wearing what they put me in, but his face… scarred, marred. I've seen similar marks, but not on this level. I watch as he continues on. Somehow, he sees me despite the black that floods this place. Or, he sees the visor gleaming off my shocked face.

"Fucking…. I'll open you up." He stops before the door, and from where I'm perched on the floor the Nanohazard symbol printed on the clear barrier is haloed over his head. "Open you up and show you," he said. "Make you purr. You wait right there."

I had little confidence in what he was saying. He wasn't coherent, he was lost in the images that filled his head. To my astonishment, he continued to the end of the corridor to a terminal lit by its screens. I thought he was drawn to the light, but he touched the dials and the door before me gave a hiss as it swung open. Cool, stale air washed over my body. I took a few deep breaths, my chest ached to inflate with fresher air, but it felt good. I can't believe it felt good to be hurt and breathing.

With the camcorder still in hand, I all but crawled out of the cell. I had to get on my feet, get my muscles to work. Needed to find out what happened, what was going on. I would've asked the patient these things, but the man had already forgotten about me. I pushed myself upright and leaned on the clear glass wall, as he wandered by making mutters about these flowers he saw. Wings and flowers. I wanted to forget them, he was lost to them.

I staggered to the end of the hall, trying to make sense of where I was, what sort of place they had forgotten me in. The other room, filled with gore, was open as well. Maybe my savior had not been trying to help me specifically, but I was only very lucky. I stumbled against a plastic covering fitted against the opposite wall, the natural plaster wall of the building. If I wasn't hypnotized by the bright gleam of monitors and the promise of information, I might've recognized the signs. Instead I ignored it, and moved to the terminal the patient had fiddle over. Not to my surprise, there was nothing on it to help me understand where I was. What was happening.

I was starring at scans, neuron imaging, some kind of fluctuating patterns and spikes measured through vibrant scans. Dreams. The Engine. I felt those distortions work through, those 'flowers' as he called them digging into my thoughts. Oh, Lisa. My boys. Names. What… What were their names?

I dropped over the terminal, my strength failing me as I pushed from the wall. I slip down to rest on my side rather my knees, the rags they've put me in offers no barrier, no comfort against the elements. It just covers me and it smells… terrible. They put me in a room and forgot about me, left me to die. And now, now. Now I can't remember things. I remember… the accident. The truck. No. NO!

I put my back against the wall coated in plastic, and stare at the clear chamber across from me filled with death. The copper reek works its way out to me. Repetition. Cycle. Numbers. Four. Four people. Four of us, my family. Two boys, my wife. I left them, to do the right thing. What was the right thing to do anymore? I fucked up. I broke it all.

My hand was still poised on the terminal, and I slipped it off to my lap. Something startled me as it flipped off, across my line of sight. I glared at it distrustfully, until I got up the nerve to reach over and touch it. In the frail light of the screens above I could make out its surface. A little booklet. I flipped it over and looked through the notes. Messages, a few reminders and shortcut commands I couldn't read. I hated how the numbers, were just numbers. Where did it all go? What else did I forget? A gripping pain of failure and worthlessness rippled through me. It's what I did, it had been my job for years.

It'll come back though, it could. I needed time. Time to remember. I remembered my wife's name. My wife. The boys names will come back.

I flipped open to a clean page. The notebook didn't bend all the way back, due to the pen stuck in its spiral back. I pulled the pen free and gave the notebook another look through, before I began writing on the first clean page. Tears burned my eyes, my handwriting was never something I'd share, but the scratch I was putting down could hardly be considered a cousin with the English alphabet. I'm just shaken up, that's all. Give it time, it'll pass. I'll recover. I'll bounce back.

"_I fucked up. Oh god. Where am I? Hours could have passed. Or weeks. Brain filled with Static, they made me watch the… the Engine. Have to get help. Have to call for help. Lisa, I'm sorry._

_If I die, I know you'll find me._

_I know you won't rest until you find my body. I hope you find this camera with my corpse. I hope the evidence on it does what I couldn't, exposes the truth._

_Lisa, baby, I'm sorry. I fucked up. I thought I was doing the right thing. But I fucked up bad_."

By the end of the note, I was done. I was at my limit, whatever meager little scrap of it remained after the Engine, listening to people die, my amnesia. I don't know what I was going to do. Had no idea where I was, what was going on. They tried to take everything in me away, and leave nothing. I somehow survived. I don't understand. I understand nothing.

I write the note, back propped up by the plastic layer, a little wet spot forming on my back through the filthy rags I'm wearing. When I finish writing, I drop the notebook beside the camera and collapse into my arms sobbing. I don't know what I'm going to do. They won't let me walk out of here, I won't be allowed to leave. Is there even a way out?

If I stay here and they find me, they'll finish what's left of me off. Regardless how broken I have become. I have to leave before I am found, before they discover what has happened here.

I dry my face off, and collect the few items I have procured. I'm no steadier on my feet than I was before, but I'm getting stronger. At the terminal is a spare battery for the cameras main memory. I know the spare will be worth carrying, if I plan to continue gathering evidence. The night vision function had a spare power source, a feature that reduced strain on the camera itself. It only required a single double A. It already had one in, but it was more than half depleted.

There was a detail I was missing. Something important about the use of the night vision in the video camera. It was in a distant conversation, lost among the many things in my mind. Trying to conjure up the recollection resulted in wings stretching through my vision, a sharp ache, and a smell like scorched cotton. A warm smell, hallucinations. None of this was good. I left it alone, and let pain subside to a tolerable degree.

I return to the corridor, the way the patient had wandered. I kept my hand pressed to the wall, a portion of my attention on the video feed of the cameras visor angled beside my head. The rooms they had stuffed us in, now bloody and thick with copper, had medical tables and various vials and bottles lined up on top of them. That was aside from the strange tubes… Feeding tubes. I had lost weight, I could feel it around my middle. But I wasn't starved. They had kept us alive with bare essential nutrients. I didn't feel hungry either, I felt hollow and betrayed. Everything. They took everything.

The patient that had assisted me, was standing in the last room. I was using the night vision to guide my way, and accidentally looked his way before I reached the end door. He was standing in a puddle of bloody, human pieces, just staring at the mess beneath his toes. He looked up my way, and without making any sudden movements I pulled the door before me open.

I pulled the door shut at my back and lowered the camera. It was awkward carrying the notepad, spare battery, and camera between my hands, but my jumper had no pockets. I stumbled forward, and tried to do something a little more creative with these items. The sleeves of my smock are tight enough, I just stuff the notepad and spare battery in. I pick up on sound coming from through the next doorway. The small transition hall is not very long, and I see more of the thick plastic coating the worn walls. The lamps above still work in this short section, and the yellow blaze settles a thick layer of heat on my shoulders.

A doorway is set in the wall beside me, the plastic cut out to allow access to the bathroom. People in this area used them. I stumbled into the clear door that was slung back, that same nanohazard symbol pressed into its dirtied pane. The sounds beyond the doorway were loud now, I pushed on into the room –corridor. The path ahead was dark, with only a lamp here or there that blazed against the heavy black walls. I was amazed by how little I could see even with a few scarce lights. Off items stuck out as sharp shapes huddled in the hall, a misplaced medical cart covered in bottles and tools, and a few large canisters set on a trolley.

I began to realize this wasn't the area beneath the mountain, I still didn't know where I was. But if I wasn't under Mount Massive, my chances of walking out of here had increased by… by... A good percentage.

It'll come back to me. Just takes time.

Sheets of the plastic walling was set up, thick enough to block off the other half of the room. This must've normally been a large room, but now it was sectioned. On the other side of the shielding, was the rest of the room. A medical ward, shelves and cabinets lined the walls and a table sat in the rooms center, around it sat various pieces of discarded furniture. The wings spread across the plastic, twisting against the clear surface. I choke as my head pulses, I had all but forgotten. Hadn't managed to leave behind the pulsing shapes yet. Flowers, he called them. They bloom in my eyes, I can barely see through them into the medical room. There's movement beyond the shapes imposed over my eyes. Danger

"Keep him still," sneered a voice. I crept around the canisters, my attention divided by navigating the floor and the action within the room beside me. "I been dreaming about this for ever. Doctor."

Numerous people, more patients, were situated around the lone table of the makeshift medical ward. Even at this distance I could identify the scarring and wounds that ruined their bodies. A few were shirtless, others were fully clothed. To my horror, they had a man in medical scrubs stretched out on the steel table. A group was poised to hold the struggling figure down, while another patient stood over the doctor and insisted on jamming the knife into the table.

As I watched, the doctor screamed and pleaded with the man over him. Numerous times the blade missed the squirming body and hit the table, the sharp clack that resulted, would echo throughout the room they were in and managed to creep into my side.

I didn't think the patients could get through the thick plastic between them and I, even with a sharp butcher knife. I didn't want to test them. I moved through the soft shadows of the barred off end of the room, occasionally I'd looked up to check the doctors progress. Though, I fought my curiosity to look over, I didn't want to catch the fateful moment of the inevitable outcome. The doctor had no chance of escaping, and I had no means to help him.

I was startled by the notion that I really didn't want to help him. Even if I could, I wouldn't want to bother. It was wrong, I shouldn't feel this way. What was done to me was worse than I thought.

By the time I reached the corridors end, I had an odd taste in the back of my throat. Sirens echo from around the corner, splinting my skull with their intrusive shrill. Images pulse, images I want to forget but they never leave. Hard to think, the migraine I carry intensifies as I lean around the doorframe. The corridor is large, a set of canisters sit directly across from me, plastic draped and stretched over outdated walls. Along the length of the hall are situated some metal doors, but no way into the medical room with the patients along my side. Good.

My attention trails the movement of another patient, as he darts across the hall to the nearest open door. He dives into the room and the metal door clanks shut. Hollow. Empty. But I am alone, and that is what matters.

Sharp pain constricts my skull, and the blossoms… I don't know what else to call them. The blurs intensify as I wait for the sensation to pass, and borrowed relief to flood the veins in my brain once more. But the agony doesn't peak, it instead stabilizes. I nearly topple as I push away from the doorframe. The Engine. I thought I would leave it behind the further I went, but it followed me. No. It was in my head. Static churning through my memories, scrambling my objective. Too much. Too much stimuli all at once. I'm breaking under the strain.

In the open hall there's… something. A familiar outline, a sort of shade I can't define. My hand quivers as I struggle to raise the camera. Somewhere in me is this recollection, one of the few I was allowed to keep after the treatment. A forgotten and distant conversation. A light. Some kind of enhancement, can make it revealed. Maybe it was a joke, or another spook story. But I'm in pain, too much pain for sanity's sake. The visor reveals nothing, until I find the switch for the night vision. The pain, the screeching, the images swarming behind my eyes. It's all too much, I can hardly get my eyes open to evaluate the distorted green hue of the visor and what it exposes.

My jaw is locked tight, I feel drool seeping down my chin. My breath is ragged, as I struggle to wrestle control over my body. The Engine. It'll kill me. Indirectly, if I can't see, can't breath. If I can't focus. What is it I needed to do?

Escape.

The mist condenses into a manageable shape, a form familiar. Humanoid. Too human. It's presence sent sharp prickles up my arms and down my spine. Its aura was malice, death, an unstoppable wave of wild emotion. All the pieces of unresolved trauma pressed into this cold space of the hall. It sought an outlet for the pain, to punish those that had ripped it from the suffering minds of sick people. It was the manifestation of their hate, of their tears and blood. But now it was out of control, and it was killing whatever it could catch to sate its voracious appetite for revenge.

"_Is this what they were tying to do?_" I'm backing away. Not fast enough. Can't get the commands to my legs, can't make myself move faster. Some sick fascination has overridden my drive for survival. I want to see it. Have to see it before I die. The lamps above pulse and fade, as I lower the video camera from my face. It's almost calm when I pretend it's gone, but I know it's there. Even if I can't see it, it was always there. It was always been there, waiting.

I'm trying to remember things. How can it be so hard to remember? The doctors were always talking about the dream therapy. How did that, make this? I stumble on my feet and nearly fall, if not for the wall I brace my body against. "_Or… was this what they found_?"

Shrieking. Wailing. A forlorn sound of broken gears twisting through gravel, rising in volume as I stand where I am, and listen like a dolt. When I'm certain I can no longer bear the sharp squeal, I twist away and stagger back through the doorway. The plastic walls, the medical cart, faces of people maimed by lies, blur around me as I dash through the decrepit corridor. It seems much longer and more corroded by age than what I remembered. All the time I could hear the rasp and grating den of the thing I had seen. It had to be following, it would be compelled to pursue and punish me. Destroy every last one of us for what we had done.

I practically plowed into the door of the dark chamber I had escaped from. It fumbled and fought with the handle, but the door was locked somehow! I didn't linger long to understand what had happened. As it was, I could hardly see what I was trying to do at the door with my senses swamped by pulsing blooms. Wall flowers.

The torn out plastic at my side caught my attention as I swung back, groaning through my teeth. The door was wide open, all incentive enough for me to dive inside. The bathroom interior was brimming with light and the air was thick with the foul chemical smells of bleach. I pressed my shoulder against the old wood door as I swept it shut. I paused for a moment, listening for the sounds. For eerie chatter, scraping through the air, as though its shape was an abomination on nature itself. I backed away from the door when glorious silence slid into my ears, and I continued to back away toward one of the stalls. I pulled the door open and stepped inside, crammed my body between the foul ceramic toilet bowl and the wood side of the stall. The stillness enveloped my senses, my heart throbbed and I could hear the blood gush through my eardrums. I waited for nothing but for the world around me to die, so I may continue living.

Beyond the door sirens hummed, distant echoes rolling through the open halls. Was there anyone left to appreciate the call? To heed the warning?

"Those crazy idiots," I muttered, breathless. It didn't feel possible to catch my breath, my chest heaved with each gulp of air. My eyes stung, and the shapes twisting in my head. It magnified the painful memories, the loop.

Did they succeed? I wondered. Was that what they were trying to make? Was that the thing they were looking for, in those people, in their fractured minds? Those crazy bastards. I couldn't be sure, but I didn't know what else That could be. It was unnatural and evil. But most of all, I didn't understand it. Couldn't comprehend what it was. A shape. That was all I knew of it.

As I sat huddled in a toilet stall, one thought persisted to loop through my head. "Their success has killed us all. Their success has killed us all." And it was true. Whatever they had hoped to achieve, had amplified by… thirty. And now it couldn't be controlled, and anyone that had contact with it was murdered indiscriminately.

I didn't want to think about it. Didn't want to think about any of these questions that needed answers. The air felt charged, painfully so. Like it was alive with some sort of vibrations. It was always like this. Always. Stress. Jumping at our shadows, paranoia. Couldn't place our fears. We blamed each other. I saw it. I saw what it was we feared, what they were trying to do. The manner that they succeeded in. Oh god, what did they do? Why would they… do this? What possessed them?

I rest my head on the side of the stall wall, and struggled to force away the feeling from my skin. Forget the shapes working through my mind. The repetition. It would take time. Eventually, I would get better. I would get through this. But only if I survived.

* * *

><p><strong>I'm writing Weylon as a more vocal character, as a person that could be ruled by rational and in a way isn't very rational regarding his situation.<strong>

**As always, thank you to readers and comments. These chapters remain prototypes, but here's a working copy to get you through to the end of year. I am way behind.**


	4. Chapter 4

Initiative

When I decided that it was time to move, my body refused. I couldn't stay locked in this toilet, shouldn't stay in one place too long. That thing, the shade. It hadn't come for me yet. Had It found someone else? Did It turn on the people in the room, struggling to kill their former suppressor?

They were still holding the thrashing man down. I glanced up, caught by the movement as I weave around the cart of abandoned canister and tables of equipment. My senses were wracked, and divided. I wanted to listen if the shape was still present, pick up on the haunted shrill as it grated through the stale air. The man dressed in his lab coat had large blots of red on his shoulder and waist, and his movements had lessened. I gnawed at my lip as the images came back, the grate and the wings. They were almost beautiful, somehow poetic as my mind conjured jagged pains that worked through my brain.

A harsh cry shot from the room I was beside, and I jerked to the plastic covering dividing us. The doctor was dead. I couldn't find where the weapon had gone, with the patient that had been wielding the knife now perched over the body. He was staring right at me and I gazed back, my eyes probably wide and white like moons in the shadows.

"That was good," he hummed. "I want more."

To my horror, it looked like half the room had turned their focus on me. I stood beside the medical table staring back at them, wanting nothing more than to dissolve into the shadows. To become vapor, and to not be missed. To be nothing. The fear gripped me that they knew me. They recognized me! I couldn't remember if I had seen any of them, my mind too lost on blooming wings. Their faces. They were unrecognizable for who they might have once been. They'll want revenge for that.

"You." One man broke from the group and approached the clear barrier I stood before. "No observers." He stood before me, his eyes murky and diseased somehow saw me. "Come in."

There was no visible way to get into there from this side. That put some relief into me. I glanced around the plastic wall once more, before I gave a slight nod. I would try to avoid that area, avoid getting boxed in with those people.

Lights still swirled within the corridor I had turned from, but the sirens had silenced. I blinked against the harsh lamps when I moved from the shadows. There was a smell in the air, but it could've been me. I didn't need to mull over the lost time, locked in the static. Had to keep moving.

The walls beyond the plastic were eroded, faded paint and plaster crumbling in sections, but the walls were still standing. Plastic covered much of all the surfaces I could see, while newer metal panels had been laid on the floor. Above huge pipes and tubes ran along the ceiling. I remembering seeing something similar somewhere, not long ago. It hurt my head to try and recall this place precisely, and I decided it was best to leave the memory alone. For good, maybe?

I tried the first door I came to, leaning into the cold metal and receiving a wall of warm air and copper. Oh god, I choked on my breath and leaned on the handle as I took in the full room. There was a bed in the center, a small table blank of use. But every odd surface of that room was splattered with rich crimson, so much that I felt a physical force propel me backwards. Shapes churned in my head, infecting my vision with swelling distortions. In the red mess I couldn't identify any piece that might've once been a man. It was just chunky red and full of the hot metallic air. My stomach turned as I smacked my back into the plastic coating of the wall behind me. Oh god… it was still fresh.

The patient I saw, in the hall. He had run into a room. That was him. That's what happened to him! He was smeared all over those walls.

I pushed along the thick plastic, legs heavy and my body stiff. The camera I clutched tightly beside my thigh as I moved to the end of the hall, toward a clear containment door. Sounds came from the other side, muffled by the thick barrier. I felt eased by this, but it felt deceptive. There was no safety in the place. I reached the halls end and peered through the plastic door, to find another corridor filled with a pulsing red light and violent energy. I managed to frame the security agent on the floor, in that nanohazard symbol printed on the door. It was almost comedic, it looked like he was having a wild battle with filthy laundry.

Then the realty sank in, and I drew in a sharp breath. The dirty cloths held a shape, of the man that wore them. He was pinned beneath the person hunched over him, hands locked into something. It was a surreal event to witness, I could pick out the muscles working hard in the agents back as he held the struggling body beneath him. It was only a body. It was nothing.

A few yards from the guard stood another man, in a long stained shirt that came down just past his hips. The figure watched the two on the floor, before he spun away and took off to the other end of the hall. He vanished through a set of clear doors, headed towards dark splatters on the walls beyond. I don't know where he went. A safe place.

The body gave a final twitch and only then did the agent rear back up. He swung on his feet, to an open door in the halls side. The door slammed shut and the man on the floor never got up.

He could be unconscious. He could be asleep. I don't know much of biology or medicine, but the agent hadn't held him under water. He wasn't drowned. He was just... he just stopped breathing. He might get back up. He might not be all the way dead.

I pushed at the door before me, but there was no way to access without… I can't remember. But there was no handle, no way to unlock the door that was visible. No way to hack it, if I had the time. I twisted around, and spun all the way when I saw a corridor extending into gray plaster walls. The plastic covering had been trimmed through, by some sort of tool. I thought very hard on what sort of tool might have done this kind of work. I pushed through the tear, into the decrepit and stale air of the outdated building. The floor creaked under foot, the sound of it comforting and normal. How could the sound of withered floorboards in a place like this sound so normal? The notion of it blew my fragile grasp of comprehension over this place.

I don't know where I was exactly, but I knew for certain I was not under the mountain. There would be walls of drywall and wood between the outside world, and me. Not walls of stone, and metal, and hell. I could find a way out of this. I didn't know where I was, a section of the Asylum I had never seen. But I could figure this out. I could work my way out of this. Just take it slow, be cautious. Listen, and use good judgment. I always had good sense for decision making. I always argued with Lisa over petty things, but we didn't always agree. We'd come around though, we compromised. I could compromise. I'd be all right.

As the hall darkened, I recalled the camera. The night feature. I raised the visor to my face and looked into the green tint. The hall came to an uneventful end. A gurney crammed against a door. Plexiglas siding was framed around the warped door, and I debated on poking at it to learn if there was a way to crawl through.

Until I heard that sound.

I slammed into the door at my left, twisting at the handle as I fought to get it open, get away. Was that its sound, the shrieking rasp, or was it me? The door didn't come easy, but it did snap open. Of its own accord, and I managed a fearful squawk as an arm thrust out and snagged the front of my shirt. The scream of the shade was forgotten as I went stumbling over my feet, forward into a room that reeked of fecal waste and rot. My eyes burned as I swayed on my feet, but no longer being tugged about I was able to keep upright and give the room a hasty scan. The blood ran cold under my skin.

"Our peeping Tom."

Cabinets and long counters lined the walls, some boxes and left over furniture was scattered across the floor. I could make out the frail tint of skin as the only light of the room reflected off the sheen of sweat. I couldn't count how many were here. Too many. Under the light, to the side of the room was the medical table with the dead doctor upon it.

I took a step back and bumped into a warm body. I jerked around as the person (who probably dragged me in) was now poised before the door, arms crossed. He watched me with eyes sunken into his face, most of his cheeks and nose were replaced by rotten flesh.

"Come to join our therapy session." I turned to the table, where a patient stood behind the corpse. The individual looked unmarred, almost normal if not for his bald held and the veins protruding along his sleeveless arms.

I reached a hand to my eye as pain rippled. The flashes of images, frail membrane webs touching the tip of my nose. I took a breath and smelled the blood, the men standing in this hot room with only the light. I felt my body back in the chair, lost. Loosing time. Everything was slipping through my fingers. My life, my sanity, the time I had left. There wasn't much of it. I closed my eyes and begged something, someone, to let me see the next day.

"Here, take the blade," said a voice beyond my eyes. I decided to look. It was impossible to stand here and block out the world, block Them out. "Dig around in our friend here, get a little red on your hands." Hesitantly, I took a step. When no one said or moved toward me, I took another. Soon, I was before the patient as he thrust the blade down into the chest of the corpse. I flinched, when the sturdy bone above the heart muscle caved under the impact.

"It's always healthy to express yourself," he sneered at my face. I ignored everyone else. My mind felt numb. Blood in my nose, dilated wings swelled in my eyes, the cold taste of fear in my throat. I tried to put something in my head, a thought. Something to react on. An idea to drag my awareness back from the scene before me. So I wouldn't be responsible for my actions. "You keep it bottled up too long and you might do something you regret."

My hand twitched and raised. I got my palm open and extended, when I stopped. What was I doing? WHAT WAS I DOING? I mumbled something and drew back. "I… no."

"No?" he echoed. The patient yanked the blade from the soggy, red chest. "You're one of those? Too good for the likes of us?" He managed to sound disgusted on a completely sane level, as he began jamming the knife down and up out of the doctors chest. Over and over and over. "Think you're different. Something special. There are no observers here." I stood silent and still as he continued to puree bone and muscle tissue, until the entire surface of the chest was a lumpy mush of black fluid and purple tissue.

I didn't know this doctor. He must've been stationed in an entirely different branch of Mount Massive. One I had no business or contact with. I swallowed, and raised my eyes to the patient when he paused to observe his work.

"Now." He took the knife and slammed the blunt end onto the table, the tremor rattled in my ears and I felt cold droplets on my exposed arms. So cold and wet. "Get the fuck out of here before I change my mind."

I crossed my hands in front of me, trying to crack my knuckles against the camera. I jerked away when the lone man that was poised to the side this whole time, turned slowly and moved to the corner of the room. Beside him, I could see a door coated in the light from the only lamp in the room. I flexed my hands, my unoccupied hand gripped at the thin material of the clothing I wore. I could hear the plastic of the camera creak as I clutched it, tight.

No one said a word more. None of them made a motion to remove me. They thought I was one of them. They thought… thought I was a patient. That I was brought here, same as they were. They didn't know who I could have been. Who I was. The treatment. What did they see in me, that made them accept me?

The words chanted in my head, '_Gooble gobble. Gooble gobble. One of us, one of us._' I wanted to laugh. Fall to the floor clutching my sides and laugh until someone slit my throat. Or beat my head until my brain matter oozed from my ears. Or did I want to cry? To scream at them, '_I'm not crazy! It was a misunderstanding! I was trying to help! I swear, I only wanted to help!_'

If I wasn't condemned yet, then those words would not salvage me.

I shuffled towards the door, trying not to avert my eyes from its surface and reveal that I was sane. That I was still something of a human, despite what they saw. Whatever of me they accepted. I winced as the shapes swam into my vision, and the knot in my gut twisted. It'll get better once I'm out of this room. Away from the tension, the rage. The paranoia.

I pull the door open and revel in the stale scent of the hall. Walls exposed, walls that were not saran wrapped and filled with wires. The small corridor was dark, some light braved the shades at its end. I would head for that. My foot caught on the large sheet of plywood left on the floor as I shuffled forward. I could see the silhouette of a bed, and a few of these outdated heaters lined the hall. I raised the camera, and checked through the visor for shapes I might've—

"The fuck are you trying to go?" The face appeared right in the visor. Hard, broken skin dried over old wounds. I only saw blood and cracks when I gagged on the shriek in my throat and stumbled backwards, onto my butt. I dragged myself backwards, the battery and notepad shifted in my sleeve and my concern went there in fear I'd lose my only possessions. I didn't register the threat approaching, had barely taken note of the steady footfalls coiling around me.

He stood over me. I couldn't see his face with the light plastered at his back, framing him in a dark dangerous shape. A shadow. The memory flashed through my head. A shape reared over my cowering form, followed by pain and the taste of hot salt and copper in my mouth. The constricting pain felt new in my head, and I made a small sound as the agony rolled my brain flat. I was still lost in the Rorschach's, when I felt his fist snap across my brow.

Run. Escape.

I rolled aside as his leg shot out, and kept going to hit the metal frame I had dropped beside. There was an resounding snap, and a curse from the man poised over me. I didn't chance a look, I rolled to my feet and pushed off. I pumped my legs under me, whatever balance I thought would hold me up failed I nearly smashed into the gurney beside the wall.

"Come back here!" The patient sounded close to my back.

I pushed by the bed, searching with my eyes the end of the corridor twisting around me. The door before me was boarded up, and if that wasn't enough a bed was left before that door. At my right was a door, the dark within seemed to be leeching around the side left partially open. I crashed against the worn wood and kept going and smashed into an obstruction that felt like polished wood and old metal. I fumbled with the camera while the panic strangled me, I thrashed about in the small space feeling for the way through. I had stumbled into open air before the night vision was on, revealing the room in all its grainy glory. I could hear my pursuer curse and picked up on the noisy shudder of furniture, when he had a graceful collision with the obstruction. I kept going, feeling with my free arm as I scanned what was visible of the room. I heard thumping and pained sobs. Oh no, damnit! Someone was in here too?

I spun around as I felt my way around a pile of desks and cabinets. There were other items left over in this room – tall wood shelves, boxes, broken tables – but nothing I could use to slow down the patient. He shrieked profanities… or, was that someone else? Someone just as dangerous?

My foot got tangled on a tattered sheet, and I nearly plowed into a figure that jabbed and swooped hard blows onto a withering mass of body parts beneath it. Another patient beating someone, I didn't get a good look, couldn't tell if it was a doctor or something else.

I kept moving. Not far from the abuse stood an open door, in the wall. I don't know if I was still being followed, I didn't want the patient to finish killing whoever and then target me next. I ducked inside and dragged the handle of the door after me.

The closet was large and lit by a single bulb burning yellow near the high ceiling. Counters were lined close to my sides and glassed in shelves had been fixed to the high walls. Medical shelves with glass doors, the contents were gone and the fronts shattered. Another door sat on the opposite side of the room, but it was jammed tight and some tables were stacked before it. A clock hanging on the wall read three, forty-five, but it was still and silent. I turned back to the door when the sounds beyond it ceased. I didn't believe I had gotten away. I wasn't safe until I was far from this place, but for now I'd settled on moving to another area of facility entirely.

I fumbled with the camera in my hands, nearly dropping it because my shoulders were shaking too damn hard. My whole body quivered and I had not caught my breath yet. The walls reflected the sounds of my distress, and I looked to them seeking anything. Salvation, a weapon, any meaningless tool to instill confidence. False confidence, but it might help me to run faster.

The vent on the high wall was hanging by a screw. I stuck the camera strap between my teeth as I clambered onto the countertop beneath it. I pick at the vent, trying to pull or push the metal panel aside. The screw popped out of the crumbling wall and bounced off my forehead, the vent fell thereafter clattering at my toes and crashing to the floor below. I wretched myself towards the door fearful the sound would draw one or both of the violent patients to the overlooked room. When for a long minute there was no sound and the walls reserved the tense quiet, I turned back to the open passage above me.

I was not a very athletic person. I played sports with the boys, went on long walks with my family. But high cardio for an extended duration of time was not my cup of tea. I wrote script and stared at a screen all day. My brain was the muscle I worked most. I had believed that it would be all I needed in my entire life.

I jumped up and gripped the edges of the vent. My body hung and my fingertips bore into the sharp metal edge. I snorted and took a breath between my teeth, some of the dust that lifted clung to my tongue. I thought over my options. A leisure activity I forgot was none existent in this place. Bright flares twisted in my vision, becoming red then draining into whites. There could be another way out. The patients could be gone, and I could try the door that was on the other side of the hall. I bypassed it, because the door that was ajar looked more appealing than a door that was closed. It might've led no where.

My eyes stung, but not from the dust. I can't do this. I can't… I won't be able to get out of here.

I released the vent, and fell backwards onto my butt. The sharp jolt wound up my spine, and I tensed as my muscles relaxed. I fiddled with the items in my sleeve, and once more checked the door I had come through. Not a sound. They could be gone, or they killed each other. I rubbed at my eyes and moved off the countertop. I pulled the camera out of my teeth and quietly slipped towards the door. I tuched the handle, expecting to hear shouts come through to my ears. But it was silent. As if the world beyond the door had vanished. The entire ecosystem that once thrived, lived, and died was now gone. I turned the knob and pushed the door open, I raised the camera to my face.

A sharp grip took hold of my wrist on the door handle. I blinked as the hand tried to pull, fighting to drag me back into the shadows and death. I jerked back and knocked the edge of the door over my attackers wrist. I heard a grunt and the tight hold released. The door shut with a clack as I sprang back, the handle ripped out of my hand when I neglected to release it. As I stood waiting, the handle rattled and twisted.

"Come outta there you little prick!"

I spun away practically taking flight up the cabinet. I tossed the camera up into the vent and grabbed the edges, actually locked on with my fingers and hoisted my entire body upward. My bare feet scrapped at the plaster as I propelled myself up the rest of the way in, until I was on my stomach scooting in the remainder of the way. I remember to snatch the camera, somewhere in the dark near me. I looked into the visor and the green tint as I scrambled along, leaving the hoarse voice behind as it screamed into my memory.

I was all right, I made it. I didn't know I could do that! I flew. I practically flew! A grin was tugging at the corners of my lips, it was painful but it's been how long since I actually grinned like a human being? I hope I didn't look as psychotic as I—

"…bad idea. We get out of here through reception and let Murk Tactical clean it up."

I froze up when the low voice slid into my ear. Where was that coming from? No one saw me, whoever….

"If they get here in time." The voice was meek, strained. I slipped my knees up under me and shuffled towards a light in the bottom of the metal passage I was in. My heart was racing. What if… what if I hit a weak spot and fell through? Who was speaking, I need to know. It could be patients. Sounded like patients. "We need help now. If we get them on the radio, the National Guard could be here within…."

"We don't even know the radio works," barked the other voice. I peered through the slants in the vent, into a room of discarded furniture, scattered books flattened into the floor, and an overturned wheelchair shoved up under a table. Two people stood beneath the vent, a security agent in the usual blue uniform, and a quivering man dressed in a white shirt and slacks. The civilian was smudged with dirt or blood, and his shirt tail was ripped at his side. The agent looked in much better condition, it didn't take me long to understand why.

Camera. I had a camera, I should probably use it. Where was the record button?

"It's short wave," the meek man insisted. He brushed the agents outstretched arm away. "If the prison's got electricity they've got signal. And the lights are on."

Prison? The Asylum had a prison for the criminally insane, the committed too dangerous to leave with untrained orderlies or the nonviolent patients. I shuddered over the recollection, that there was nothing civil or 'professional' about this facility. Lies. My head ached. I soon saw that the camera was already on record, but the battery in the device itself was already low.

"Murkoff has it under control," the agent hissed right into the man's face. I wanted to laugh, the place was falling apart, and the people along with it.

"Yeah, I noticed," the guy snapped back. "We need to get to that radio."

"Outside help doesn't come without outside attention." The security agent pushed closer to the man and tilt his head, as though speaking to an idiot child. "You want to take responsibility for every legally shaky thing you did on the Murkoff company payroll? I know I don't." With that bit of warning, the agent turned and walked out of sight. The other guy followed, pressing his argument once more. They were both out of sight.

"It's too late to worry about that." The voice grew distant, but I could clearly take out the undertones. The restrained fear, the desperation. "This just has to stop."

"You're scared. You're not thinking straight." I began moving, carefully along the thin metal floor. I wasn't making too much noise, but I concluded they were too caught up with each other to take notice. "Let me make something clear." The agents voice took a dark, cold tone. "You try to radio outside for help, I'm gonna give you a whole new something to be scared of."

There was a sliver of silence, and I thought that they must have already left. I passed over another vent, and could see below the shoulder of the civilian. "Are you threatening me?"

"Yes."

Not another word was uttered. Their footfalls grew softer as I waited. The room below became much larger, hungry somehow. I tested my movement, cautious if one had remained behind, the researcher. He looked like one of the researchers from the advanced team, he knew to be scared. The room swallowed up the reverberations from the vent, but did not utter back. I was alone again, and safe. For the time.

I became bolder as I moved through the tight vent. My breathing was amplified by the hard walls that boxed me in, and I felt the edges of claustrophobia trickle in. I only felt eased whenever I spied another slice of light through the openings in the vents I crawled over. I thought of trying to smash one open and getting into the room where the security operative and the researcher were, but it didn't seem the better idea. I paused beside one of the openings of light and just lingered by the comforting glow from the room below.

I mulled over what the researcher said. The prison. A radio at the prison. Probably an outdated CB, but if it was old it could work. It was built to last, built to hold out.

"_There's a radio. In the prison. Short wave. If it's electronic I can make it talk, make it work for me. There's hope, Lisa. I'm coming home to you. My mistake was subtlety, like you always said. I thought leaking information to a few journalists was the safer way. I didn't want the spotlight, the attention. Murkoff is dangerous, I know that. I thought I had to be subtle for your sake, Lisa, for the boys._

_But I should have exposed what Murkoff is doing to the world, I should have shouted to anyone and everyone. I can't die. Not before I reach the radio. They can't cover this up now. It's too broken, too dangerous._"

In the poor light of the vent, I reread the note on the previously page. My desperate words came back to haunt me. So much I should have done. So much more I could have done. I let them do this. I tried to stop it, but I didn't try hard enough.

I stuffed the notepad back in my sleeve, and rolled the edge up a bit more to keep the small items I had taken up, from falling out. The vent felt endless as I scooted through the tight walls. The night vision didn't hardly help, but I could see where the edge twisted and where the heavy grates were that kept people from using these as pathways. I was fortunate the grate at the very end had been removed, or rotted off.

I peered down into the dark room the vent ended in. Metal bed frames stacked on the furthest side, some sort of metal cabinet was left beside a door. There was not a whole lot to view, and no visible path. I fumbled with the options of the camera, turning off the enhanced night vision by accident and suffered a small panic attack when I forgot how to turn it back on. What was I doing? If I wasn't carful I was going to screw this up too. I muttered to myself, until I finally hit something and the green tint appeared in the visor. I was able to locate the zoom feature, and scanned the room more thoroughly before I just dropped in. I was debating on returning to the other vents, above the bright room the researcher and the security operative had their disagreement.

Below, a patient was huddled in a corner. His legs drawn tight over his head, and his arms wrapped over his knees. At the distance, even with the zoom, I couldn't tell if he was shaking as bad as he looked, or if I was the one trembling. I didn't delude myself into the belief that he was harmless.

I shut the enhanced vision off to conserve what remained of the battery, and remained in the opening of the vent staring down. My knees ached with my weight on them, the thin skin pressed between bone and icy metal. There were numb spots in my toes. I needed shoes. I needed better clothing to ward off this chill. The vent creaked as my weight shifted, and the still air coiled, swirled through the dark void. What was I doing? I was going somewhere. Not here. Where was I? I shuddered, and felt the pulsing move through my mind. Elevator grate and the skulls, the X-rays. I was sick with something bad, I picked up something. Christ, what was I going to do?

The noise. Churning vibrations working through the walls, grating against the resistance. Shapes moving that I felt were there, just couldn't see. My mind haunted by shadows, the paranoia now had an identity. It made it real, gave it purpose. I shouldn't be here. I can't stay here, and just wait around for It to find me.

I only recalled the person that was in the room, while I was shuffling across the same room I had dropped down into. I shut off the night vision and listened, but there was no indication that the patient was even there. I knew I saw someone. I was certain. But as I stood in the middle of a dark room, trying to ignore my own heartbeat. I wasn't so sure anymore. How could I be so uncertain of what my own eyes saw? I'm losing it. I'm scared, not thinking straight. Oh god.

The camera gave a soft chirp as I restored the night enhancement. The only door out had a cabinet in front of it. I crept toward it, and examined the base, the legs. I stared at it for a while longer, not seeing the obstruction itself, just staring at an impassible wall. I was working to see beyond, what dangers awaited me.

I gave the container a push and felt the floor grind under it. I had to move this. I stuck the camera strap between my teeth and braced my shoulder to the grated side, and pressed the sore pads of my feet into the cold cement. At first the cabinet held, not because it was heavy, but because it was stubborn. I took a breath, shifted my footing and pressed until the metal legs scrapped across the floor. There was a sound, between my pause as I adjusted my grip and pushed the obstruction aside. Once I decided it was beyond the door frame, I took the camera and raised it before my eyes.

The man framed in the green tint shocked me. I crashed back against the door and raised my free arm to defend myself, but he didn't move. I squinted at him as I felt around for the door and the handle at my back, the thud of hollow wood clambered over the walls. The shock that the doorknob may have been busted rippled through me, as did the realization that I was trapped. The patient watched my slow panic as it throttled me. I couldn't be in here a moment longer. He'll beat me. Break my bones, rip my muscles.

I choked out a sound when my palm slapped against the cool metal handle, before I yanked the door open and backpedaled out. When I was just out of the doorframe, the door snaps shut and I could hear a low _Grinding_. I thought it was the man on the other side, replacing the blockade to the door but as I moved back, I could hear it still.

In the room with me.

I revolved in place as the eerie scraping roved somewhere deep within the walls. In the thick pipes bolted to the ceiling above, in vents and crawl spaces I couldn't fathom. Somewhere deep, but not far. I could see no space or item in the room with me now that could cause such sounds. There were only a few broken or overturned tables, a wheelchair, and book shelves and tattered books melting into the floor.

I imagined Freddy Kruger in some distant boiler room running his claws over walls and the cement, as soft jolly chuckles rolled out of him. Slow, methodical dragging as sparks flared at his palms. My skin crawls, the scratching could be in the room just next door working out a way to me. I moved beside an overturned table and knelt down, just to catch my breath. The room was large, well lit, but the sounds. Would anyone else hear them?

The doors in the surrounding walls were barred shut, but offered no solace. To the side of the room extended a short corridor consumed by shadows. The lamps had burnt out, but at its end gleams the bright box of the light through an open door. Briefly, I recalled I had little idea where I was headed, or where I was yet even. I was not under the mountain, I reminded. A hot coal of excitement burned somewhere in my cold body, warming me briefly before it was snuffed out. I had a plan of direction, shortly ago. I was distracted by images, white hot lamps burning out my eyes. I knew where I was going. I couldn't forget, I had an idea. There was a place I could find help. Help….

Notebook. There's a notebook I could review, I'm sure I wrote it down there. I did do that. To keep me straight. That's all the notebook was, my tether to the world. It's all I had. I set the camera on my lap, and took the small pad of papers from my sleeve and flipped through them. I scanned through the pages of short cut commands, script someone (probably dead) wrote. I located one page with my jittery scratch in the paper, but couldn't bear to reread it. I wrote down my thoughts, my plan.

Prison. The prison had a radio. That's where I would go, it's all that I had. This place needed help, someone needed to know. I would scream out for anyone, bring in people that could fix this, or destroy it. Something. What was happening now, it couldn't be left to its own devices. There could be people, victims like me, searching for a way out.

I paused before I took the old battery out of the camera. This was risky, if I didn't do this right I could just screw it up. Unless I found a flashlight, I wouldn't have a chance. But if I didn't, if I kept going with a camera low on power I was dead anyway. I pulled the battery from the cameras back. My heart dropped when everything in the device turned dark all at once. No power. It just shut off. I took the spare from my sleeve and slipped it into the slot. There was no problem, it slipped right into its slot and after a moment nothing happened.

Shit.

I sniffled as I worked at the dead functions of the camera. No. No-no-No! What did I do? How did I fuck this up?! Every single time! Every fucking time—

The camera chirped, as I held down one of the gray buttons on its side. Power button. You had to turn it back on, because it was sort of switched off. Of course. I laughed a little at my panic, but the sound was dull. An octave above death. I searched through the features of the camera, assuring myself that all that I needed was still in order. The battery was nearly charged, good. Just needed something for the night feature. My eyes in the dark places.

I checked my sleeve and the notepad stuffed there, before rising to my feet. The room I had been hidden in was now silent, the sounds or whatever had moved off. As I skimmed over my surroundings one final time, for anything I missed, it came back to me. This was… this was where the two were speaking. The security operative and the meek researcher. I knew it didn't matter at this point, if they were gone somewhere else. It unsettled me that I crashed into the same room I had tried to avoid, even if it didn't matter. As long as I wasn't trapped.

I stood at the edge of the dark corridor and gazed back to the door I had come through. I wanted to make sure. I knew the answer, but I wanted to confirm it for my own senses, a sort of conclusion. I returned to the door and tried the handle. The knob turned, but the door thudded against the cabinet now braced to it. I stood and stared at the old worn door, and let all of it sink in.

The patient was hiding here. He was hiding from them. My emotions were mixed, I wasn't sure what to feel from this revelation. I already knew the security detail were pricks. But maybe, they were just evil.

I was overtaken by the swirling sensations, the weight of helplessness of being lost and having no one to help me. No other human to speak with, whom wouldn't strangle me even if they knew that I was still sane. They were damaged by the panic, and anyone with the capacity would sooner kill me than ask my name. It would just be easier to kill someone than risk it. I think… I could understand. But the idea of killing another human being, even in desperation or self-defense… I don't know. It was beyond my moral self preservation. I had survived despite the Engine, I was still me. If I did it now, if I let myself kill when I could run. It wouldn't be _Me_ when I finally escaped.

If I escaped.

I pause and look to the camera in my hand. I raised it up and activated the night feature as I moved through the corridor. I didn't need it, really. But there were a few—

A hiss, and strangled noise of rasping breezed by my face. I stumble back and drop to my knees, smashing one into the hard cement floor. I didn't see what was there, there was nothing. I thought I saw It. It was there, but it kept going. It was gone now. It was gone.

I took a breath and swallowed. It had just gone on, didn't stop. Wouldn't kill me. I was shaking hard as I crawled forward and leaned just past the frame of the door, and looked into a metal corridor with plastic walls. Plastic covered walls. To my right was a fallen patient and a clear door into the next corridor, bright strobe flashing in the ceiling. It took a while for my brain to make the connection, that the corridor I was looking over to was the one I first came through. I couldn't recall how all of this began, where I started. It was a blur of fear, pain, and drowning sorrow. I just wanted to get out, that's all I kept thinking.

Then I set my hand on my rumpled sleeve, where the notebook was. No. I had to call for help. That was my only hope. If I died here, no one would know. No one would care. Another corpse to stack on the pile. Another body to burn and forget. A lost statistic in the company payroll. I suppressed a strange sound, and looked to the hall that continued to my left. There was a high probability the guard and civilian went that way. I don't know where they were headed, I couldn't remember. But there was a door a little ways to my left, beside the corpse.

I used the doorframe to pull myself up and moved on my unsteady legs, trying not to look on the body. I leaned on the wall as I struggled with the handle, but the door was locked. I gave a few more tugs before I spun away, turned along the wall and stood staring down on the patient.

He was… dead. I had watched him die. Watched the life get ripped from his body. I— he looked so strange. Eyes bulging from his skull, large marks left at his throat. His skin was so pale, but that might have been from the therapy. I didn't want to look at him, but I couldn't avert my eyes either. I shouldn't look away anymore.

I recalled the camera in my hand and lifted it, giving it a short glance before my eyes went to the patient. "I'm— I'm so sorry." I raised the camera and let the visor fill with the cold corpse. "Murkoff did this," I whispered. "This is what Murkoff has done."

When I felt that enough was there, that I had taken enough, I pass the corpse and began through the hall. I press a hand to my eye as the images, the horrible shreds of insanity cut through my brain. It might've been caused by the pulsing red light set in the ceiling above. Or it might've been the terror that curled up in me as I approached the mangled and broken bodies at the corridors end. Dark crimson spread over walls, the pipes bolted to the ceiling overhead, red mist sprayed over plastic walls. These were the dark blotches I had seen. The patient that ran, that came through here. I remember now. I could understand. There was no end to the death and chaos that roamed these sterile halls. The only thing that could survive here was insanity and whatever it left behind.


	5. Chapter 5

**Men Behind Glass**

The purge gates were designed to contain, or prevent contamination of something. Whatever it was Murkoff had inadvertently unleashed on its people. I didn't understand fully what it was. It kept coming back, the dreams. Therapy. The Engine. The shapes warped and crawled behind my eyes, and I nearly fell to my knees as the pain lumbered through my brain. I wanted to wretch my mind off it, all of what was done. Forget what I had endured. I looked to the end of the hall at my side, the bodies torn to pieces, blood sprayed over the ceiling above. Damn. What had they been trying to do? What good was any of this!?

I buckled forward and gagged, but nothing came up. There was nothing in my system. Just sour breath and misery. It felt terrible to have the urge to purge something in me, anything. But nothing came up, and I was left with the tremors and the jagged pain in my skull. I spat the thick foam off my lips and moved to my feet, falling again. I caught myself by the edge of the wall and used it to brace me up as I kept going. The plastic crinkled under my weight, and I focused on the sound as somewhere in the distance sirens warned of the damage already done. I was staring at the red smears of the walls and floor, slowly drying in the cool air. Which way had It been headed? Where could It be now? Anywhere, I decided. Anywhere near.

The door that blocked the corridor off, was gone. Just gone. I crept through listening to the hounding call. I didn't need that bearing down on me, I needed to focus. It was hard to focus. I swayed on my feet a bit as I left the support of the wall and moved around the large puddle of gore, I had to cover my mouth with my free hand even if it didn't stifle the smell. It wasn't fresh, but it was still so very wet and glistened under the lights above. My head whipped to the left, beyond the corner of the intersecting corridor to a door. A hard smack from the other side threatened to tear it off its frame, but the metal held. I didn't stop me from taking a step back and stepping into the icy fluid that had gathered on the floor.

I forgot about the door and stared down at my foot, and the black liquid that stained the spaces between my toes. My sense of humanity knew this was wrong, but another piece of my mind, something that had been dredged up by the Engine knew it couldn't be helped. This place was hell incarnate. My attention returned to the door when another thud came, and a crack formed along the side beside the doors handle. But the sounds ceased, and it took me a while to come back to myself. The air that held my shoulders was cold and full of blood.

I was thinking of a truck, warm laughter. Good memories. The humid bathroom and the scent of soap, foggy mirrors. Kids laughter, and the thud of someone jumping onto the floor. The vibrations terrorized the house and we'd yell at them to stop the rough housing. I wish I hadn't yelled.

I coughed as I inhaled, as though taking a breath after being submerged too long. The metallic fragrance stained my tongue and I retched, fearing I'd fall to heaves again. I moved towards the silent door, and the battery that was left beside the broken corpse. His shape was hard to make out, twisted the way it was and buried in the long stains that trailed down plastic walls. I picked up the battery and moved to put it in my sleeve, but I stopped and looked at the corpse.

He didn't need his clothing anymore. Blood drenched and small rips along his chest and legs, but it was better than what I had on. I reasoned. I could just wear it over what I had on, but the clothing I wore was foul. I needed something cleaner. And shoes.

I took his belt off and got halfway down unbuttoning his shirt, when I stopped and recoiled. What the hell was I doing? I can't do this. I can't do this! I can't wear the clothing a man was killed in.

I can't.

There had to be clothing somewhere else. In the dorms, the spare uniforms or a lab coat. There were lockers all around that held the spare shrouds in the event of an accident. I'd find something that wasn't gut riddled and someone didn't die in. It just… it creeped me out. I didn't want to wandered around looking like a zombie in this place. The shoes, they probably didn't fit me anyway. But that was a petty excuse.

I folded my hands over my knee where I knelt, and gazed at the unresponsive body. I wanted to say something. Talk to him, I guess. Say I'm sorry? I didn't. I just shuffled away, but not before grabbing the belt I had taken. I'd wear that. Maybe it had something in it I could use.

I adjusted the belt around my waist, and found that I had lost a good deal of weight. I had no pants loops to secure the left over space of the belt, so spun it around so it wouldn't be in my way. There was nothing useful in the small pockets on its side, not even a pair of handcuffs. There was a picture of a naked woman (I was married, I tossed that). I had a knife now, a tiny pathetic little knife I could cut thread with, (or my wrists). I found a suitable pocket to stash the batteries, and another space on the side to secure my notepad. I wanted it close by, where I might brush it accidentally. Its presence helped keep things lined up in my mind. I needed the reassurance. A little slice of confidence that even if I didn't make it, someone might find this and understand that I had been silenced by the cooperation.

Hopefully someone would find my words.

I stepped carefully over the slick blood on the floor as I took the corridor on the left. A doctor had fallen, head twisted backwards and blood. Was there that much blood in the human body?

I glanced over the cameras fixed to the walls around this portion of the hall, and wondered who would view this footage? Probably someone with not a lot of patience, but a heft amount of clout. They'll watch this mess unfold and start rolling the calculations, the zero's involved. And they will be disappointed with the company, and the time wasted and the money lost. But never upset with the lives lost, or the families ruined. What did those things have to do with the company?

I continued, toward a door left open around the bend of the hall. The interior was dark, but I could see the dull light framed at the far end of a wall. A window, but not to the outside. The pale lamps of the purge gate burned through the cloudy Plexiglas, and I could make out a figure on the other side. I stood in the doorway for a brief second trying to decide if what I was seeing was there, of another distortion.

The figure, the person gawked back at me as though he were having the same mental debate with himself. I wondered if I looked as ragged and beaten as he did. Or was I looking into a mirror?

I stepped into the shadows, and the figure came to life. He leaned against the window separating us and thumped against the shatter proof substance with a muffled, distant sound.

"Help me, please! I'm a doctor! I need to get home to my…" His voice trailed off as I moved closer, into the soft light that escaped the room he was stuck in. It was the purge chamber. Somehow, he had gotten stuck in there. "You're not security. I was…" I looked down at the ugly jumper I was wearing, as the guy seemed to scrutinize my appearance. A note of recognition hit his eyes, and he renewed his plea. "I'm a patient like you. I stole these clothes from a… dead body I found. You gotta let me out of here. Please." He indicated the desk before me covered with papers, and a broken monitor. There was a panel with a large button on it, and a cord leading from that to somewhere. "Just push the button, open the door. We can get out of here together."

He sounded so optimistic, or hopeful. For someone who had decided I was most likely a patient, or insane, or any sort of dangerous. It frightened me to think he was very willing to join with me, if it meant escaping. It was only his benefit he was thinking of, but… what about me? Was he really a patient? The man was coated with blood, his story might be true? But where did that leave me? He had given me some consideration, and I was giving him a chance to think. To plan.

I had to get through the purge chamber. If I opened the doors, he might just run away. If he thought I was dangerous, he wouldn't wait for me to catch up. But a question I had avoided hit me.

Had he killed someone already?

Without giving it another thought, I pressed my palm to the dial to reactivate the gate. The emotion to streak through his eyes was so vivid, it struck a cord in me. He could have been someone normal, someone that just wanted out like me. Trying to get home… Home to who?

The doors at either end of the room hissed open. I jerked and looked to the side, and the man behind the glass noted my expression. He whirled about and saw what had caught my focus.

"Doctor." A patient stood in the doorway of the purge gate. He jabbed a finger in the man's direction accusingly.

"No, no!" The doctor, patient, whatever he thought, tried to get away from the man that lunged into the room and took him by the shoulders of his shirt. Even if the doctor had gotten away, the doors to the purge chamber had already shut and the thick pumps over head began misting the room with their chemical decontamination. I shuddered as I watched the patient heft the other man, whoever he was, up by his scalp. The doctor had no hair to grip, the patient seemed to dig his fingernails into the skin of his scalp and slammed his face into the think Plexiglas.

I winced when a dull crack came through. That wasn't the plastic giving. It was a skull cracking under impact. I took a step back. At the time I wasn't aware, I was lost to the moment and diving deeper into dark places burrowed out of my mind. I had the camera clutched between my palms like some sacred totem and angled forward, to take in what I was seeing. Eating up the action and the pain, the death and the only truth of this place.

"All of you," the patient snarled. "Doctors and liars." He raised the doctor against the window once more shrieking as he slammed the face again, and again. Over and over. When would he stop? Was he able to stop?

He let the body flop to the ground. I felt the blood drain from me, out into the cold air. The patient fell to his knees and brought his fits down, his fingers. He unleashed his fury on that corpse until blood specks were rolling down the glass, and a thick sleeve of red had worked up his elbows. He continued scream, to accuse everything that had been done to him was because of the one he released his rage onto.

I went back to that room with the patients, and the doomed doctor. I remembered his words as if he were right before me now, reminding me of this lesson. "…_keep it bottled up, you might do something you regret_."

I could be on the other side of that glass. That could be me pummeled and brought early to oblivion. I'm not there, oh god. That could have been me. I could have been dead hours ago. Why am I still alive?

The patient rose to his feet and gave me a last glimpse before he turned away, calm and placid. I didn't think it was possible for him to stop. My heart sank as the purge gates opened. He would come for me now. I had nowhere to go, no safe place. But the patient didn't give the other doors his time. He kept moving, and continued out the other side. I thought for a moment he was headed for me, but many minutes passed I stood staring at the bloody window and I heard no footsteps. I was all right. I was safe behind the glass.

The door to the room was open, and the blood stained corridor beyond it. I stumbled out of the door trying to work through my feelings, trying to understand this mystery. I was still alive because I was damned. Somehow Murkoff was saving me, at the same time trying to destroy me. I would've been dead long ago had they not thrown me away, if they hadn't tried to forget me in a room. The oppressed had inherited the hell they were brought to. It was fitting. Deranged and fitting, just like everything else in this place.

I moved across the thick blood puddle, and heard that sound. THAT sound. For a moment my mind went blank as images, AGH GOD, swirling pulses of light and membrane. It was here! IT was here! It found me!

I dashed around the corner, nearly skidding on the layer of gore wet on my feet. I made sure my grip was firm on the camera as I ran. At the halls end there was a shape huddled at the base of... a door. A dark mist swirling, growing larger near the blocked end of the hall where the patient had been strangled. It could CRAWL UNDER DOORS.

Purge gate! The purge gate decontaminated! The Project! Purge gates were designed to keep the project contained!

It was a loose theory, but the research team swore by the gates. They worshipped them. The red flash the strobe light overhead swept over me as I scrapped by the corner, not feeling the pain in my shoulder as I kept running. It was open! It would be open! I opened it! The doors were not, but I nearly plowed into them when they activated on my approached. I kept going and crashed into the other side of the small chamber, when the shielding snapped into my path.

I pressed myself down into the corner, furthest from the mangled body, and stared at the doors as the shielding swept aside. I panted hard and waited for the window to hiss open and allow the thing to enter, so I too could join the endless stains that coated these walls.

But the shielding didn't budge, except for the panels in my back. I scooted back as they parted and watched, believing now death would take me. But my expectations were never made real, and I watched through the green tint of the visor as the dark shape faded and dispersed to some by degrees as it glides away into the dark distance of the corridor. To places elsewhere, to other prey.

I heaved a breath and turned my eyes to the doctor, the patient, the bat. A thing that tried to be both but couldn't decide which. It was worse now that I could see him, view without the ugly tint of the window with the poor light, his mangled body. I feel myself loosing touch, just not caring about what I was seeing. It was too much, and I was damaged and exhausted through the span of time I had been left to myself. Alone in myself. Everyone I thought I knew, was dead or getting there. I might be the only person left alive, that was still sane.

Could I really say I was sane at this point? God, I don't know. I doubt I was stable enough to keep track of… I touched the pocket on my side, that held the notebook. Ah… I had this. I had something.

"_I'd never seen a man die before today. Never seen a dead body outside of a coffin. Dozens today, murdered and worse. I looked into one man's eyes as another tore him to pieces. Claimed he was a doctor, then saw the rags they've dressed me in and changed his story, said he was a patient. Could have been either. They're all crazy. All sick. No real difference between them now. The therapy is spreading. And what am I? I watched this man die and thought, "it's not me, thank god."_

_I know I'll die someday. I don't want to be murdered._"

The page before, reminded I was headed to the Prison area. I needed to summon help, call in people that wouldn't die or try and kill me. I had to keep moving. Jesus, I had to keep moving and try to stay alive. And sane. I don't think I could do both, I didn't want to choose one over the other either. No choices. No options.

I climbed to my feet, determined not to crawl up the frame. I needed to get on my feet and move of my own accord. If I didn't try, I would die. Keep my thoughts together, keep my feet steady. I couldn't remove myself from the nasty sensation of the blood drying along the edges of my feet or between my toes. I might've already lost it.

It was more plastic coated corridor, but much of the wall behind the barrier had slants of two by fours, to support the material. As I moved towards stacks of crates at the halls side, I heard a voice. A shout from someone outside of the corridor.

"Another one's coming!"

I made it around the corner and saw a reception block, office entrance with desks and chairs, some overturned filing cabinets. And numerous bodies lain out, blood drenched. So much blood.

"He's one of them. Lock it down. Now!"

I didn't see the speaker as I moved towards the open room. I could make out the large doors, glass and mesh windows in front and movement just beyond. It was gone in an instant, and it probably was the speaker. Above the doors sat the bold and red words EXIT. It was a wonderful sight to behold, but I already suspected as I moved in. I knew the doors were locked.

The knob wouldn't turn. The Asylum was designed with deadbolts that needed a key to open, but didn't have a latch that could be turned. It kept people from walking out. Shockingly, this might've worked too well. Except I was still stuck inside, after I was mistaken as a patient. If it made people run away, and patients leave me alone, then that was best. I didn't want to fight anyone, I just wanted to get out.

I glanced around the room I was in, and reminded myself of the bodies left behind. Patients and the staff alike, slaughtered by something. I see footprints in the carpet I stand on, bare feet and the company shoes issued to the workers. We weren't allowed to bring a lot of personal items, and we were not allowed to go off on shopping trips. Not most of staff, at least.

A large desk was at the rooms side, and heavy canisters left behind and around it. I didn't think they needed the artificial fluids and things but for the area beneath the mountain, that place. The… what was it we were doing down there? I have a hard time with remembering, the things we did. What was it I did exactly? Debugging. Software. I worked with software, and computers. It's too hard to keep it straight, I don't know why. I wish I did.

I moved to the opposite end of the room, towards a doorway with nothing but the promise of shadows behind the broken frame. It opens into some sort of side room, used as spare storage for more barrels of the fluids used for the project. A few boxes and files are scattered across the floor. I walk to the side of the room and stand before the stacks of barrels, and wonder if I can climb up. Should I? I just came from this side.

Prison. I'm trying to get to the prison, I don't know how to reach there. If I can get outside, I can get my bearings. I could go someplace high, take a look around. I wouldn't be so disappointed if I accidentally escaped these grounds, though in all likely hood that was impossible. My luck didn't work that way.

I jumped when my foot hit a box of files, and the noise of the contents spilling spooked me. It sounded like the thing, the rasp. I just imagined it, the plastic walls and purge gates had it contained. I tipped the box over with my foot and shoved it aside. Some of the files looked recent, crisp and in one piece mostly. I knelt down and flipped through a few.

My hands began shaking as I went through the files. Notices of resignation, processing of staff. People were seeing shadows, and reporting it. Murkoff took in a lot of their own to treat something called PPSD, the Psychopatholgist Proximity Stress Disorder. Someone called Trager had Mr. Annapura taken in due to his threats. Christ, I wasn't the only one. People on the top, they knew what was happening. They tried. Oh god, they tried. I'm not the only one.

Then I find it. The first name I read off of it was Blaire. Oh no. No I… I can't read this. It's too much. It's mine. I recognize the stupid ID number I was assigned.

"_…__ employee one-four-six-six, report to the Morphogenic Engine monitoring _…"

I choked on a sound in my throat as I worked through the image, terrible reaching hands and the elevator gate. Screens. Twelve. A row of three by four. A man on the other side of the window screaming for help, fear and desperation in his eyes. And then blood. How much blood is in the human body. So much. It's all over the wall that are closing around me, crushing the life, my very soul, out of my bloody eye sockets. I'm choking and shrieking, but no one's there to help. No one wants to get sent behind the glass with me.

I come to on my side. Again. My body aches, the air is too cold on my feet and shoulders. There's a soft ringing in mind head, clear like a bell, and the back of my throat has that flat taste. I choke on my drool as I shift, stunned. I try not to think, I try not to remember too much. I push myself into a sitting beside the doorframe, and let the light fall across the crumpled note in my hand.

_From: __j. blaire murkoffcorp. us __.com_

_To: __h. grant murkoffcorp . u s .com_

_Subject: Resignation for Mental Health, CC 8208_

_Ms. Grant,_

_You may receive requests for information from a Mrs. Lisa Park, of Leadville, CO, in the coming weeks concerning the resignation and hospitalization of her husband, Waylon. If so, please forward them to my personal attention._

_Waylon Park (Former consulting contract 8208) resigned due to previously undiagnosed mental illness. I personally visited Mrs. Lisa Park and her sons and broke the news to them, with the "silver lining" that Murkoff Psychiatric would be graciously providing treatment. Mrs. Park had some less than charitable things to say about myself and the Murkoff corporation. I assured her that with her power of attorney she could try to fight the doctors' diagnoses of her husband's illness._

_However, if it were discovered that he resigned under false pretenses, his insurance would be cancelled and the family would be saddled with not insignificant healthcare debts._

_Hopefully she understood. But if she insists on making a nuisance of herself, or tries to get around me, please let me know. This is one I want to take care of personally._

_Yours. _

_Jeremy Blaire_

My Lisa. I wish she would stay quiet just this once. What they are willing to do, the lengths they'll go to silence people. I don't want her to take on what I have. For the boys sake. They can grow up without a dad, but not without a mom. They need you, Lisa. Please. Please don't make the same mistakes I have. It will only be regret.

I fold up the page and placed it in one of the back pockets. I could forget it for now. Just needed to focus on getting outside, seeing the sun and some fresh air. It'll do wonders, might clear my mind a bit. I had to have something to cling to, to drag me back out of this hell. Lisa had always loved the outdoors. Long walks. I wasn't too far gone yet. I would keep moving and find a way to stop this.

I shuddered to think that Jeremy Blaire had visited MY family, and spoken with MY wife. A multitude of things he would be willing to do them.

Out of habit, or forgetfulness, I try the large doors at the rooms front, but they are still locked. I weave around the bodies thrown across the floor and move to check the gate of a door left shut, just beside the desk cluttered with canisters. It was locked, and a rove of furniture items left stacked behind the gate. I checked behind the large desk to find more corpses, people whom had been hiding but were found and torn to shreds. They hardly looked like human corpses, just more slaughter house fodder of organs and bone.

I turn away and examine the outer side of the plastic covering, which was built through the back half of the room. A quarantined entrance that prevented contamination. It must've worked, that thing would have found me by now unless it had lost interest and gone elsewhere.

I was unsettled by my conclusion that It was able to think, that it WAS capable of goals and objectives. Some part of it was human, if it was every human in the first place. The patients. They had been used to find it. Was It—

I entered the short corridor of plastic. Through its clear material I viewed more materials along its sides, mostly large barrels of undefined contents. On the right was a pallet, set on it was what might have been bags, covered with a bright blue tarp. Something supplement, minerals. I held my head as I rounded the corner, and found another purge gate. I entered the door though it was obvious it was none functional, it was dark within and the odd smell of the gas seeped throughout the small chamber. The doors beyond were jammed, and I could only stare through at the dark corridor beyond.

A body lay under a piece of plywood, the plywood was snapped in two pieces. Some of the plastic from the walls had draped inward, and large cables hung from the hall with no true purpose, but to mystify me. A strobe light blinded me as it spun in the ceiling above. The sirens came from places distant, or near and I only lost my interest in the echo. I wish someone would just take the time to shut them off. If I had the chance, I'd do it myself. I couldn't remember where the controls for the facility were. Maybe in the room, the Security room where I watched that guy die.

It wasn't me, thank god.

Two dead ends. There had to be a way around. I paused in the joining corridor of plastic walls, before turning back into the large lobby. Someone was screaming. Agonized sounds that sickened me more than frightened. I couldn't decide where they came from, but they faded as I moved away out of the corridor.

I could get around. I could figure this out. It was… like a puzzle, there was an answer. There had to be. Or I could make an answer. That'd be a little like cheating, but whatever worked. Don't be so linear. Think. Think of a way around.

I looked up at the ornate chandelier that hung from the ceilings center. A lingering reminder of sanity and order, a little piece of time from long ago, yet forgotten. Antique ideas with the same backing, the same motives that damned this place. I was thinking of walking out, but was there a way to crawl out? Was that the answer? The staff would be locking doors to hold off the danger, but no one would be using windows?

I spun about and glanced to the side of the plastic wall, where the barrels were stacked. It wasn't high enough. On the other side, there was a pallet on the barrels. I moved around the plastic edge, beside the desk. I could see the area clearly now, and I moved to the pallet set upon the barrels. I secured the camera in one of the pockets before crawling onto the pallet, the heavy stack of bags kept it from wobbling as I treaded alongside the containment wall. Large sections of plywood had been left upon the plastic top, for the maintenance techs that needed to work up in these areas. The plywood was steadier than I thought it would be, and I was soon hunched over in the dark.

The sirens had faded, but in their place was the snap and bark of current. Wires crackling against the cold air, their electrical ends exposed through some calamity. The patients? Who would cut wires? I wanted to say Jeremy Blaire, he was my poster child for all things bad that happened around here. It felt good to blame him, even if I got nothing out of it but some private satisfaction.

I felt along the metal vents until I had the camera up, the night vision active and guiding my direction. I stumbled as the board I walked upon tilted forward, but I managed to keep my balance. I wasn't bent over for long before I reached an opening in the plastic cover, and the plywood ended. I knelt down to see where I would put myself. A plywood, snapped in half, a body beneath it with blood streaked around him. Cords hung from a compartment, from where they had been severed. It was the corridor I was looking into, from the broken purge gate. I thought it over, I'd be stuck if I dropped down in there. The entrance doors had broken windows and mesh, I could maybe get the plexi out of the way and squeeze out. Or, knowing my luck, I might just cut myself to pieces trying to get outside. This didn't seem more favorable. But I was trying to find the prison block, outside might come later.

I lowered down, careful not to step on the body. When I had regained my balance, I gave the dark corridor a thorough scan. A door near my side was locked. I moved around the broken cables, leaving the burnt air and the barking cords behind. Five steps and I began to pick up the sounds, the shriek of pain against the squeal of something. A tool or mechanism of some kind. It sounded like the bread saw we used for Thanksgiving. I stop beside an open door, and listen as the sobs die out to gurgles and then the silence crashes through the corridor. I watch through the visor and turn, but I can see no more at the end of the night visions range. I might be all right where I am, whatever was happening wasn't nearby. But it was difficult to judge with the way noises bounced along the flat plastic corridors. It wasn't like the place, the place beneath—

Stop trying to think about it! I shake my head, and move onward, forgetting the door for now. I reach an end in the corridor and find a security operative lying dead between two clear doors lodged in either side of the wall. Numerous dark footprints are stained around him, and move off to fade the way I have come. Beyond the Plexiglas there's little to view that would excite me. Endless halls of plastic and metal, extending into the dark depths of the green tint in the visor. A door broken from its frame and light flooding the hall, but I had no way to reach that side through the nanohazard door. I turn away, blinking against the terrible strobe as it flashed overhead. It was made worse due to my reliance on the camera, and the light amplifying visor.

There was an odd scent in the cold air. A warm smell of char, but I couldn't identify what it might be. I attributed it to the gas from the broken purge gate, and the severed wires singing the air. I returned to the door I had passed prior, and leaned around the frame, scanning the eroded walls. On the wall at the side was a broken window with a body sling over the frame, with long and gleaming cables hung from the man's waist. With a start I realized it was his intestines, some had fallen out. I clutch my stomach as I turn away and moved towards the half of the room on my right, where there was light. Large, thick curtains extend from either side of the room, sort of dividing it in half. Bed frames and a few mattresses were left here, and all manner of trash and discarded junk was left across the floor. I don't know if this place was left neglected, or had the place been ransacked when Murkoff lost control. It couldn't have been left this way. I'm sure it couldn't.

The body was old. I coughed when the stench hit me. Oh god, what happened? The doctor was already decaying, and flies had swarmed him. I couldn't decide on something that made sense. The blood on his lab coat was old and dried, he looked like he was stabbed, or cut. And footprints. More tracks left by bare feet. Had he… was he just left here? How long has it been since it all fell apart?

I checked behind the thin curtain set up in the rooms corner, hung up around the bed there. Nothing there, nothing to help or impede me. A door at the other end of the room beckoned, though I didn't look forward to returning to the dark corridors.

I moved back to the shadows, back to the window were the body hung. I didn't look his way as I examined the room inside, through the green tint of the visor. I coughed at the rotten reek and listened to the wings of flies snap and hum. I didn't understand. There was too much happening, and nothing here was making sense.

The room had nothing, either. Book shelves, a few broken lockers, pages and files scattered in thick piles across the floor. It was a sea of books. I grunt as I swung over the frame and crossed to the only door that was not barred shut. It swung open and I peered into a connecting room. A gurney had been propped up beside the wall, another set of lockers with doors torn off. A picture hung to the wall beside the door, had a spray of blood stained up its front. But no body. The guy left draped over the frame?

The only door out of the room was left open, and beyond it was another corridor with its mandatory glimmer of strobe light. I squint as I peer out, listening for sounds. There was a shriek somewhere, and the howl of the tool, the trimming knife. With disdain I realized this was the corridor I had come through, I could see the legs of the corpse beyond the thick cables, and hear the bark of static. I drew the door shut before going back to the divided room, and climbed over the frame with the deteriorating body slung over. I felt no relief in reuniting with the bright light, however short. The air was heavy with rot.

Needed to get away from those bodies. I didn't want the reminder of what would follow, for the people left here, forgotten. All these people. Would no one miss them?

Another of the nanohazard doors was left shut directly on the left, but the corridor extended to the right allowing some relief. This hall smelt worse than the last area I had moved through, rot and the hot scorch of meat. I could almost envision bodies left to a blaze, melting under yellow flames. I don't know where this path would lead, if there was a way out anymore if a fire had been set loose to spread. I didn't know Murkoff had detained fire, could manipulate it and test it. I shuddered when I realized this thought was not feasible, I wasn't thinking right. Fire was untamable. Most likely, a spark had ignited and somewhere a room was being lost to the inferno that was allowed to grow. I don't know.

I ventured into the hall, blinking under the bright strobe in the ceiling. A short distance through the gloom and I located the remains of a door, crushed against the floor. Its frame was left wide open, with pale blue light seeped out to mix into the shadows. It gave me a path, some much needed direction to take but… I was not pleased with this. In the corridor beyond the gaping frame was another nanohazard access, and through the clear door was the corridor I had looked in from. The body was still propped against the clear surface. I was making a long winding detour around all of these sealed doors and I was getting far, far off course.

The sounds that came from within the door. The wail of mechanized tool, and the thick voice of someone. It didn't sound like a person. I crept towards the broken frame, the foul scent was so heavy I was nearly choking on the air. The heavy aromas of scorched food, meat sizzling and burnt Teflon. My eyes watered as I was overwhelmed by the harsh combination and I reached up to wipe some of the moisture away. Somewhere in my head, I made note that I had no glasses. It was weird that I would think of it now, I needed to think of other things. The room that someone had fled from. The doors were blown outward, as if someone had thrown themselves against it in pure distilled terror.

It was a kitchen. I could hear this guttural harsh voice beyond a tall shelf, a rolling cabinet obscured sight from the other side of the room. Additional metal contraptions and tray shelves were jammed into the room. Movable closest were shoved up beside one wall, the other extended a set of cabinets and countertops, beneath the long preparation counters were rows of large industrial cans for the kitchen staff. Atop the stainless steel, the remains of two or more bodies had been scattered, among blood coated knives and scissors. There was blood on every inch of the stainless steel at every wall.

My gaze focused beyond the tall shelves, to the shape of a body thrashing about. After all the violence and killing I had seen, I didn't register at first that the person blocked from me was not in pain. But his behavior wasn't normal either. He snarled and slurped, like he was half drowning and laughing in the same breath. Nothing about this was natural.

Above, someone from the advance research team was hung like a skinned chicken. His feet were tied together but the dull hook was jammed through his ankle, and protruded from the opposite side with strips of tendon glistening over the silver hook. I covered my mouth when I tried to make a sound. I was unnoticed, and it needed to stay that way forever.

A frigid draft worked through my jumper suit, and I turned to the huge walk in freezer that was left open. The walls were lined with shelves stuffed with cans of food, so much food. Yet overhead hung corpses from the meat hooks. Arms, legs, heads had been removed from many of them. I… I can't do this. I don't understand what is happening. When did it happen? How did all of these people die in so short amount of time?

The power died long ago. I nearly suffocated. It took time for me to come off the images. I have no recollection of time. I don't know when all of this began. It might've… it could have been months ago? No, no. People were still running loose.

I winced as I moved into the freezer, the cold clung to the blood stuck to my feet and I felt my skin rip off the floor with each step I took. I glanced over at the shelves full of cans, labels of soups and whole chickens, and other perishables. Was any of this still good? I took a can of soup and stuffed it into my pack before moving on.

I exited the freezer, and lost any hint of my appetite entirely. The stove was littered with pots, full of red. Fingers and toes stuck out of what I hoped was boiling water, oh god, it had to be water. It couldn't all be blood. To the side of the stove, a mass of red bordered by crusty black stained a small skillet. Other pots and sauce skillets had been left out, their interior walls coated with so much red and something black had formed in a thick layer on the bottom. Even a soft glow came from the window of the blood splattered oven. The entire room was hot and smelled of cooking meat. But all of it was people. Burnt, boiled, and scorched flesh. I gagged, but there was nothing I could purge. Sick. This place was sick.

* * *

><p><strong>As always, thank you readers and have a safe New Year, as with many wonderful meals and good food<strong>


	6. Chapter 6

**Horerczy's Runt**

I found that my mind would get misplaced in some way. It's hard to describe the sensation to myself, but I lose my focus, my thoughts, and think nothing for a span before I 'came back' to myself. Hard to describe. You're a calculating machine, looking into the world, absorbing stimuli and reacting to it. We get into the habit, this false sense of safety after so long in civilization. In a set order of the way our world is run. It's impossible to imagine war, avarice, or what drives people to kill for the sake of it. For the longest time all I ever thought about was raising my kids, and growing old with my wife. A good long lifetime, uneventful. Nothing would ever happen.

Then the worse that could happen did. And I for while wondered 'why me? Whatever did I do?' And I thought for a while, just a sliver of time, that it couldn't get worse. Nothing can be worse than breaking the systematic order of life I had been so set on.

Then I got the letter.

I had wandered back and forth between a door and the freezer, for some time before I was aware of my movement. Then, it was either the door or the entrance to the freezer, beside the warm stove and the contradiction of the freezer. I huddled trembling in the doorway of the large walk in freezer, the thin fabric of the scrubs no defense against the hard rolls of air that my skin absorbed. It was impossible to find a comfortable position to crouch in, arms latched around my shins in a vain effort to ward off the chill. I shook violently. I thought for certain, my skin would rub off or my muscles would turn to ice. But I couldn't… wasn't ready to move yet.

Beyond the doors I hard heard those sounds. Not the soft scraping of something metallic. It was organic, but it sounded bestial. Whatever was beyond the door looked human, maybe spoke words, but it was nothing like a person. There was no name for it, and there could never be a name. A name indicated class, suggestion. A name made it real.

I had forgotten where I was going, what I was doing. I tried to think, envision a place that I should seek as a salvation. Something to set my goal and enforce, 'I cannot die, because that wouldn't make sense. If I die before reaching the conclusion, the equation would be False. I cannot let it be False.' I was on my way somewhere, but the place and nature was lost from me. I thought hard, searching the scraps of memory left to me. It was difficult to pick out my thoughts, my clarity. Too focused on the rolling vapors of suggestion, the hum in my bones. Steady vibrations working their cold network through my veins. Until I realized this sensation, was what found you when left too long on idle. Stay busy, don't let it sink in. It was dangerous. It was dangerous to stare at the screens, to absorb the Treatment.

I lurched from my crouch, stiff and sore. I was barely crawling across the floor to the front of the hot stove, the heat radiating off was too painful. But I had to get warm, I needed to stave of the frostbite that worked into my muscles. My throat was raw from breathing abrasive cold air, and I wondered how long… how long had I been sitting there?

What happened to me?

I rubbed my arms and legs struggling to massage out the pain prickling through my veins. It felt like crystals were sliding through, my blood had crystallized and my toes were numb.

There was a crash beyond the door, and a thick screech. I stare up from where I lay and listened to the silence that crept through, from the next room. It was terrible how the opposite of sound could be twice as terrifying. Was he… Was he going to come in here? What would he do when he found me?

I used the stove to pull me up onto my feet and took a few unstable steps toward the first door, right in front of me. I set my hand on the handle but never turned it, because the noises had returned just on the other side. There was another sound, beeping. It wasn't the sirens, it was soft, tame. A new wave of thick stench and scorched meat seeped through the air. The tool began up as before, with a whirling scream that was reminiscent of the shade.

I fumbled with the door to my direct left, and exhaled through my nose when it opened. I paused before pushing the open fully, as I attempted to mentally prepare myself for what would be beyond. Hannibal Lecter eating the brains of the surviving Murkoff staff? Not the most terrible scene to behold. Hannibal only ate the rude, and I'd be too scrawny and pathetic to waste time with. He'd allow me off with a dismissive wave, and I'd be left unsettled but no worse.

A strained whirring came from my right once I had entered into the next room. It was the cafeteria for staff, numerous long metal tables had been left untouched in the chaos that claimed the facility. For whatever reasonthey had been left untouched, either the freezer was too full, or they had been dead for too long. Corpses had been left scattered, perhaps where the people had died in the midst of whatever had unfolded. A few were propped in their chairs before the tables, chests torn open and a pool of blood drying under each. Other bodies had been in the process of escape or hiding. The few that had managed to get on their feet had fallen, to slump against walls or had attempted to hide under tables.

Wet, squelching sounds caught my immediate attention and I spun to them, receiving whiplash as a result. I held my neck and stepped back as I gawked through the visor, unaware that though I held the camera I was not utilizing the enhancing feature. Across the window a wall of dark blotches appeared before me. The flare of membranes and wings stretched through my eyes, reminding in vivid detail what I had witnessed when I had first awakened in the cell. The Plexiglas was coated in gore, taller than I stood.

The back of my knee hit the table behind me as I recoiled, and I sat upon the cold metal top to stare at the scene, of what I could make out. Christ, why am I here? What am I trying to do anymore? I pushed off the table and moved close beside a tray rack that had been knocked against a tall, concrete pillar. As I moved around tables jammed into place, I listened to the strained noise as it grew steadily louder, then cut off. I paused, my eyes fixed on the floor where the blood was drying. I focused on how much I hated it on my toes, the thick syrupy film. It stuck as I lifted my foot to move, to continue.

Pots were stacked and packed together on the table across from me, and a shelf and cabinet were stuffed around the table beside my path. I turned in place looking from one body to the next, before I found the glassed in room of the kitchen. I tilt my head, unsure what I was looking in at. It was a man poised behind the serving counter, his front was coated with dark trails of red running down his neck and chest, but he was alive. He held a device in one hand, but I was not yet interested in that. The man wore only a beard, the gore he bathed in, and a detached gaze that had not alighted on me. He was engrossed with the body butchered on the counter before him. The shirt of the corpse was removed, the chest had been flayed out and the muscles exposed under the thin skin that was peeled back. What remained of the neck was crammed into a shattered microwave?

Ding.

I swayed on my feet and barely caught myself against a table before I fell over, into the carnage around my feet. I need to get out of here, need to get away. Can't lose myself here, can't… I can't, I don't want to be noticed.

I slunk forward and slipped between the parallel tables pinned before the glass window. It was all right, he could not get to me because of the Plexiglas. I wasn't with Murkoff, he was killing Murkoff. I was a patient, he would see me as a patient and let me leave. He was oblivious to patients. Wasn't he? That was it. That was the answer.

I tried to make myself smaller, didn't want to touch the bodies unless I had too. The feeling was coming back to my toes, and I could feel enough of the thick blood that slid between my toes. This was wrong, my mind kept saying. But it couldn't be helped. Just get through this. Just keep moving—

There was a piercing squeal, and I glanced up in time to raise an arm to block a gush of blood flying my way. I falter and fell to one knee, as I threw my arms over the back of a chair to keep myself from crashing down with all my weight. I stare at the man behind the window, behind the shattered window front. His eyes were on me now, I was gazing into them. What do you see? What are you thinking? His brow was nit tightly together, his gaze dark but contemplative. I feared something in his mind, a thought he was having. Judging me. I didn't want to believe, that his sight had fallen on me and now I was in his mind to be processed, an item to be mulled over. That I was being considered in the recesses of his hazardous contemplation. No. No. He knows I'm here.

The camera was clutched in one hand, I could feel the plastic case strain in my grip. If I didn't loosen my hold, it would shatter into dust. But my muscles wouldn't relax. Cold. I was still so cold.

"Don't look at us," he hissed. His teeth were dark, I could barely see them. "I love him." The man gestured the corpse with the tool, the contraption he held in his hand.

I pushed myself upright, until I was nearly standing, and clutched the camera to my chest as though it could protect me. As though what it witnessed would be refracted back, to shield my body and mind from the insanity seeping through the floors and walls of Mount Massive Asylum. I choked on my tongue when the man reached his hand into the corpse, digging through muscle until he was up to his elbow in the crimson swill. I had a firm hold on the chair I stood beside, if not for it I would have fallen dead away. His arm worked around for a brief span before he paused, and withdrew his fist. Something was clutched in his hand. A small, flimsy sack that was the color of a plum.

The sound I heard, was not coming from the machine he held. It started as a roll of thunder, then peaked into a crashing wall of needles. Hundreds of needles spilling through the cracks in my brain, splinting my skull. So silent, you can hear a pin drop. I wanted to clutch the needles up high in my fists and scream at the top of my lungs, let the blood spill out of my palms and down my arms. Hot blood to warm my skin.

I choked on the drool that had gathered in my throat. I hadn't take a breath, hadn't swallowed. My body had locked up.

The man had the little plum colored sack above his open mouth, and let it disappear between his lips. A brief pause thereafter, and he was digging into the exposed muscle of the chest with his teeth. Ravenous, noisy grunts as he tore out chunks of red and purple. All of it disappearing little by little. I watched thinking, I remember thinking, 'My god. Shouldn't that kill him? He's eating raw meat? That would kill a man. What is he?'

I scrambled around the table, just beside the glass that smelled of cooking meat, and copper. Blood, so much blood. Too much blood.

I slammed into one of the soda vending machines beside the wall in the back area of the mess hall, as I flailed around searching for an exit. A door. There had to be a door, there had to be a way out. A way in, was a way out!

I jerked away from the body slumped between the wall and the machine, as I was losing it. My mind overrun with wild blooms that resembled melting eyeballs and spreading fluid, white like milk. Trapped. I was trapped in here with him. He would kill me, eat me. Tear my body to pieces. There would be nothing left to send my wife – a shoe box, a Ziploc bag, a Tupperware container of my eyes.

In the gloom beside a wall was my salvation, a door missed in my panic. I ran at it, dragging the metal barrier shut behind me before I collapsed in the next corridor. No. No! Don't stop here! Keep moving! Keep moving!

I pushed myself up against the plastic wall, more plastic coated walls. Normalcy, familiarity. Move, keep walking. Forget. Leave it behind, try to leave it behind. I don't think I could, but I would try. I had to stay on my feet. He looked at me, looked right into my eyes. Did he know? Did he see through my guise?

"_Don't ask to see my body, Lisa. When I die, when you finish the lawsuits that let you pry this footage from Murkoff's army of lawyers and cooperate hitmen, don't make them show you my body. Just bury it. Or burn it. Let my sons remember me whole._

_That man is eating human flesh. He looks at me and I see anger. A little desire. But more than anything, hunger. Please don't make them show you my body._"

I knelt beside the nanohazard door, at the end of the corridor I stumbled through. I was on my feet writing with my right hand, the camera held in my left. I reread the note, but didn't feel its meaning. Occasionally, the strobe beyond the Plexiglas door flashed through the visor, blinding me. Soon, I was seeing spots. Technically, I was still on my feet. Just had to keep moving. Where? Where was it I needed to find?

I flipped through the pages, ignoring the first, the script that reminded me too much of a distant past. Prison. It had lights, electricity. Hope. I took the notebook and with the pen, slipped it into the side pocket and adjusted the belt as I rose to my feet. I had eyed a doorway left open, and beyond it a sort of leading corridor. It was a dead end on one side, but the other portion to my left led into another room. The walls, the hall, everything was suddenly so very quiet.

The short hall came to an end, I stare through the green hue of the visor into a men's restroom. Quiet. How can it be so quiet? It would have been a relief, but the hum. Low vibrations worked into my muscles, as though traveling through vacant space. I was occupying open space and somehow, no consequence to the eerie chatter. I know this sensation. This unsettling and terrible sense of irrational dread, seeping through my mind. I hated it. I wanted to escape it, but there was no escape. It was in the air itself. It was this place. Distraction. Evade through misdirection.

I stepped further into the restroom, concentrating on anything I could have missed. It couldn't be this still, there had to be something. Some evidence of life, even if through the act of death. The world was beyond my physical reach, and I was left to wallow in the pitiful remains of my existence in this stale place that reeked of piss and bleach, somewhere within the dark reaches of the galaxy, beyond sanity, beyond safe return.

A section of wall sliced through the rooms center, one side was lined the urinals, and across from those a row of glistening white sinks. The other side of the wall was dedicated to lockers both large and small, the few within the night visions range were dented or doors torn off.

I stood in the room, center to the sinks and urinals, staring at the gleaming sinks in the visor of the camera. It was beyond pitch black in the room, but I didn't feel safe. At the edges of the visor lingered vague shapes, that wavered and warped as my eyes held steady. The brood of the shade swooping about in rambunctious merriment. Maybe they were the source of the chatter working through my bones? They clambered about my shoulders and shins, any part of my body not ablaze in the green sheen of the visor.

I shook myself and walked off the quivers, and crossed to the sinks on the walls side. I gripped the cold faucet and spun the handle, clear water filled the sink below and I watched it swish down the drain. In the vacant room the sounds bounced back against the old plaster walls, filling my head with the monotone clamor. I listened to the water rumble through old pipes for a moment as my mind cleared. The strange twisting blooms and gnarled gates faded into a migraine, and I could make out the bright sheen of the cameras light as it clashed with the chipped surface of the basin. I let myself untangle from the buzz a fraction more, before I set my hand under the frigid water and splashed my face. It was invigorating. Even as the water dripped from my nose, the water still spilled from the faucet, faithful and cold. Real.

Black swirled in the sink as the water soaked my arm. I had to think back carefully before I recalled the event that sent me away in terror. I pulled down my rolled up sleeve, and let the water rinse out the fresh blood. There was more still on my clothes and feet, but it was too cold to worry. I just rinsed my sleeve out of impulse more than anything.

The battery was getting low for the enhanced vision. I wasted too much time recuperating, stalling. Had to keep moving and….

Prison block.

I blinked against the dark when I shut off the night vision. I remembered without the notepad. That was good! That was progress!

I moved between the rows of urinals and sinks, trying to think. Find things, pick out your life. My wife is Lisa, we have two kids. They're in Leadville right now, and my boys…. Their names. Their names are….

I stood beside a wall, the edge before a corner that led down another short hall. The exit. Even as the battery was getting low, I held my ground as I murmured names to my ears. None of them sounded right, I'm sure they must've been the names of people I knew formerly. People who were….

I cursed aloud, not intending to. I wanted to hit something with my fist but settled on stamping my foot, though I knew it would smart just as bad. Somewhere in the dark at my back, I picked up the clatter of metal— A locker! I twist about, cringing from the dark shapes that had filled in the space my eyes had not been turned to. Couldn't see because I shut off the camera, it was still in my hands. In the dark void, rapid footfalls echoed through the large room, but it sounded like they were moving away. Retreating. Or escaping. I took a step back, tense and alert for where the attack would come. The danger was never revealed, in its place dry hinges coughed distant, then the echoing crash of a door slamming. I didn't need to retrace my steps to understand what had occurred. I didn't want to provoke the other into attack if I accidentally surprised them.

But deep down I knew in my heart, if they stumbled into the Cannibal then it would distract him. That's the only reason I didn't try to go back, to warn them. It was too much of a risk. They might kill me just the same.

I was still leery, and pressed my back into the wall as I moved along the corridor toward the only visible door. I winced when my feet fell into something wet, and foul smelling. Ignore it, focus on what's out there.

Throughout the restroom I heard no other noise, and the driving pain began to roll through my mind once more. I stood beside the door, pressing the camera hard to my temple as the strangled Rorschach's squirmed between my eyes and the dark. I felt the tugging reach of the shades grab at my clothing, faces peer through the black veil I had slipped into. Eyes darker than shadows in hell, are colder than the deep abyss of the Atlantic. Even without the camera, even with no eyes it never left. If ever I dared sleep again, would they come to haunt my dreams? Would they comfort me throughout my nightmares?

I pressed the other side of my head to the gummy plaster of the wall and moaned softly in my throat. What dreams? What sleep? The only rest that awaited my bodies retirement was death.

No. Not until I reached the Prison block. Call for help, call for someone to come and do something. Even if they leveled the place, at least it couldn't spread. Stop it from escaping. Do more than just quietly watch as hell unfolds.

The camera was at its barest function once I had set my hand upon the doors handle. I pulled the door shut at my backside as I stood, waiting for the harsh burn in my thoughts to curdle or subside, or become something more tolerable. I wasn't thinking right, I wanted to jerk my foot and move off the curious curls of shadows but there was nothing there. I blinked a few times as the spots cleared in my eyes. There's nothing there, it's not real. Delusions, caused be the therapy. This place made you see shadows. I thought I could feel them, but it was just suggestion. Not real. The water was real, they were not.

If X is any real number, then the Domain of any graph will be infinity. Er…negative infinity, great than or less than infinity. X is any possible variable, and in any algorithm where X is present, without a solution, would make it infinity. Was that right?

Yes, that was right. It would come back to me. It was coming back. Math equations, the vertex of a slope. I couldn't remember my sons names, but I didn't need to think of them in a place like this. Didn't need to associate the bad with their faces. I can, it's muggy but I can barely grasp their faces. I know they're there, I haven't lost them yet.

Bright lamps burned at the end of the corridor on my left. My only direction. The air was thick and warmed by the hot light, but I still trembled. My quivers sent rolling shivers through my shoulders, and somewhere my memories conjured up a time when I was sick in bed as a kid. I shrugged out of the memory as I took hesitant steps toward the beckoning gleam. The carpet was soft on my feet, but it was musty and tattered, barely held together by the decay that dominated the outdated building. While out of use the camera was shut off and carried beside my leg, almost forgotten in the yellow blaze that welcomed my approach.

More discarded furniture and outdated materials lay on either side of the dark hall — a shattered storage crate, decayed cardboard boxes, and another of the filthy mattress probably older than I was. My mind wondered, what was being done in this portion of the Asylum? I had never been toured over this side, and for good reason. But would it have really made a difference at the time, as in debt as my family was? Would it? Would I have been more keen to discuss these matters with my wife. My… Lisa. Her name is Lisa.

I wanted to say, 'Of course it would! Look at what's become of you now.' But I had my suspicions, and ignored them. I wanted to see my family again, say I'm sorry for what I've done. Make right what I've wronged. I just couldn't seem to fix things, no matter what I did. Regardless my good intentions.

What hope did I have of escaping?

The light is too bright, I shield my eyes as the golden haze falls over me. I pick up sounds, an echo of voices. Somewhere! I hurry to the end of the corridor as the volume raises, as two people holler to each other.

"I made it. I… I think it's safe. Can you climb up?"

Was it an older man? I stared down at a corpse slumped before a metal gate, I'm certain behind the body in the distant gullet of the shades home, the voices come forth. Another answers, he sounds about my age.

"I'm coming, Cooper," he hoots. "I just have to lock the…" There's a shriek from not far but not near, as something grinds. Was it a door, hinges? A kind of latch? "There. I'm coming. Hold on!"

The voices faded as they moved away, becoming mingled with the tingle in my face and hands. I looked down to the camera as I fumbled to pop my knuckles. It was a nervous habit. Lisa didn't like it, but habits are hard to break. It carried over, I would keep it.

I dropped the bad battery when I removed it from the camera. The thud it generated when it hit a lost piece of wood was near thunderous, and I cringed hoping nothing and no one had heard it. The halls maintained the silence, the rolling tremor seeking warm space, occupied air. I fished through the pockets of my belt until I located the spare battery, still smudged with blood. I used my damp sleeve to rub some of the red away and dried it, before slipping it into the camera. Then, I looked to the body. I didn't want to acknowledge it, but I realized there was no way to get around it. Him.

At one point he was a patient, it was clear by his broken shape and the ribs protruding along his chest. Somewhere, he had taken a pair of pants from a clean source, one of the lockers. I should have examined the lockers I passed, but I wasn't going back now. Suggestively, they were not all that far away, but for me in this place, it was too far to risk.

I tugged at the handcuffs tightened around his bloated and bluish wrist. I didn't want to think he had been left here to die, and to ward off anyone that may have come this way. I didn't touch his skin to evaluate how chilled he had become. I wouldn't. No one could make me.

Into the dark depths of the hall beyond I gazed, with my eyes alone. The frame of an open passage loomed, I could make out a large pipe, a crate of lost wood. The air was filled with burning, which brought vivid memory of the kitchen, of the pots and a stove, and the warm glow of a window. I leaned against the gate as I strained to hear, to focus on living things. There was no indication to where the speakers went and who they were. Murkoff staff, they sounded friendly enough. I doubt that'd matter if they caught sight of me. I could start counting the nails in my coffin.

I pushed away from the gate as I examined the area over uncertain of where it was exactly I should direct myself. It sounded as though they had found a way out, or knew a way. I had no means to get to that specific area.

I sat on the broken bookcase crumbling into the door behind me. I did turn to examine the door, debating on a way through the splintered wood. It looked decayed enough I might be capable on my own, to shove the door off its frame. I reached over and gave it an experimental push, but despite appearance there door was solidly set in its frame. The wall that the door was set in was fitted with the decorative glass, Plexiglas. I plucked up a discarded two by four from the ground and smacked it against the glass, the spider marred material held tighter than the door. Maybe I could just beat the handcuffs off with the two by four. If I worked hard enough, it should break and fall away? Right?

But the ideal of beating at the wrist of a person's body, even a corpse, unsettled me. It was too barbaric to imagine, too much of what could be expected in this place. Or I felt I was losing pieces of me a little along the way. The Engine hadn't left me, I could still feel it. Sitting here, that wasn't helping.

The plate above the gate read Crematorium. That didn't strike me as much of an exit for anyone sane or alive, but a Crematorium could be near an exit. It was a sort of furnace, it was possible. However, didn't change the fact I had no way through the gate.

Above my left, high on the wall was a broken and splintered crucifix. The whole wall itself was coming apart, mortar had fallen in delicate piles beside the wall from years of sifting. It occurred to me suddenly, I had no idea what time it was. I had seen a clock that suggested it was three in the midday, or night, but the minute hand was frozen in place. Throughout running around, I had not thought to look out a window, if any had been available. I was buried too deep. No different than being under the Mountain. Lost. Too fuckin lost.

My head had tilted back, until I had nearly fallen back against the sturdy wood door. I was staring up at a gap punched out in the glass, much of it had been knocked free. I didn't think I could get over that, it was too high. I climbed up anyway, stuffing the camera into its pouch before I took the edge of the frame in my hands. I felt along the top for any loose shards. There were a few specks, but I was able to knock them loose with the two by four I had lifted.

Before I attempted to climb the wall, I considered the piece of wood in my hands. It was sturdy, almost heavy for my loose muscles. I could maybe use it to defend myself. Swing it like a baseball bat. I played sports with the boys.

I tossed it away, off the side of the bookcase. I can't explain why. It seemed like a bad idea. I didn't want to tempt myself into standing my ground, unstable as I was,. I needed to flee, or hide. But if I didn't do that, if I tried to defend my life, the result would only be death. Even at my most desperate, I had run. When I was struck, I turned tail. If retreat couldn't keep me alive, then fighting back sure as hell wouldn't.

I couldn't heave my whole body up over the higher frame, as I had done before in the vent. I lacked the drive. Instead, I looped my leg over the edge and dragged myself over. I paused before letting down, checking first for any footholds. There was a desk that seemed at the threshold of collapse, but I lowered down onto it. I was surprised that it held my weight with barely a shudder. Then again, I was much lighter than I had been previously. That could explain my miraculous escape of earlier. My weight loss coupled with the adrenaline pumped through my vines, would have made it possible.

The first door, beside the door I had climbed over, was locked tight. I used a hand to block the lamps gleam as I attempted to see through the murky glass into the room. It entered into a long corridor, but my eyes could only discern so far beyond the light. I could always come back. Doors were stubborn but they wouldn't fight back.

The light faded against my backside as undertook the hall. I watched my shadow stretch and bounce across the left over plywood and rubbish. An outdated furnace was nestled beside the wall, and not far from that an overturned mattress frame. Despite the warmth in the air I still managed to shake without remorse, against the suggestion of a draft. I stepped by a broken metal chair and paused to listen, almost certain I heard a sound. A familiar rasping shrill. Was it… it couldn't be possible.

The air began to cool as I moved from the hall and light, into the reaching shadows of the corridor. I stopped just before the metal mattress frame and pressed a hand to my head, as the ache lashed its icy fingers onto my skull. Why, why now? Stress, I was under stress. Scared of something.

I hoist over the mattress frame and put a hand to the wall, feeling my way along as the black wrapped about my ankles and shoulders. Shapes moved, the distortions in my eyes, in my head tugged at the surface of my skin demanding attention. It's not real, I told myself. Ignore them, keep moving. The sound again, of a hissing whir buried deep in my thoughts. I was in the kitchen, copper in my nose and the heat chewing at my frostbitten hide. Don't think of it, keep moving.

When I thumped into a wall I should have seen, I pulled out the camera. Another of the obscure divisions in the hall, frame with a wood base and shattered Plexiglas. The door was gone.

I heard a door. The hinges shrieked, causing my heart to race as I dropped to my knees beside the door frame and struggled to see through the dark. The night vision enveloped a short patch of the room before me, brought it into existence despite its shyness. I shuffled forward on my knees and hand struggling to hear, to find evidence that there was something real. I licked some of the dust from my lips as I too a soft breath, the air grew chilled beyond the touch of light. Dark shadows exiled into the coldest reaches of these halls, of this damned place.

There was a desk and a few chairs stacked around it, on the other side of the room was a wall but I could see the section of doors. Offices. I tried to think, remember what was there. I can't remember, I've never been here before.

"I need to feed."

The voice was haunting and soft. My muscles locked up as I scrambled backwards, back against the door frame I had crawled through. My heart pulsed and the dark blotches, little demons danced around my peripheral. Oh god, oh no. Is it him? It can't be him, why is he here? My mind raced. Was it real? Was it really who I thought it was? I would never forget that voice, and that there was the problem. Was it even real? Could I trust my senses? Dear god, I don't understand!

I clutched my arms around my sides as I fought to ward off the powerful chill consuming my muscles. I left him behind, he was at the kitchen eating… he was eating another man. I wrapped the crook of my arm over my nose, when I made to gasp. It'll be fine, he's not there. Keep moving. Mind playing tricks on me. Stress. Jumping at my own shadow.

It was akin to punishment, forcing my legs to shuffle forward. But I couldn't just huddle in the shadows and die of fear. Had to get to… that place. Get through here first, then remember where I'm going.

I checked through the visor of the camera, once I remembered I had that. There was nothing in the hall that I was in, just endless green tint. It was noxious to stare at for too long, or I had a touch of motion sickness. The first door open on my right, I crept into. The walls that blocked the hall off from the smaller rooms was a portion wood, the upper fraction that intersected the ceiling was the crumbling glass. If I was desperate enough, I guess I could just dive through one of the many planes. In theory, I couldn't get boxed into these rooms.

Pale light from the outside, the OUTSIDE, spilled into the room from thin tall windows. I crawled around a table with boxes crammed under it, to reach the windows. The sounds and shades were all forgotten, as I took a sleeve to my palm and rubbed at the filthy glass.

The stains remained.

I dropped the camera and scrubbed at the windows, while the onslaught of hopelessness collided with my short spat of radiant enthusiasm. No. No… the glass was tinged with the murk. No, please, I just need to see what the outside looks like. I pushed my face against the low corner of the tall window struggling to see anything, a bush, a road, cars. I wanted to see something from the outside word. Something real, sane, and alive. The only shapes I could make out were the cubed bars just beyond the windows, and gray lumps to suggest a setting. Enough light was visible to conclude it was daytime, but the warm brilliance of the sun was denied to me.

My grief was cut short, by a harsh grating at my back somewhere. I jerked about nearly losing my balance as I searched the gloom for the source. I choked at the dust scattered about by my movement, but struggled not to cough at the heavy layer of film in my throat. I crawled close to the boxes stacked under the table and peered over its top. A shape moved, and that sound again. It was a hydraulic device, under pressure. My mind racked to make a conclusion, to find the truth in this statement. It was like a blender…

Not a bread saw. A bone saw.

I winced when I bit my lip. The reclusive figured swelled in the light as he stepped into the room, the floorboards groan under his weight as he paused to survey the dull light through the window. I ducked down and huddled against the boxes. He will see me. He'll see me!

"You think you're hiding?"

He sees me! He SEES ME! I lowered my head down to my fists, clutched to the greasy carpet. I can't move. Can't move. Please no. I can't get away. My heart stops when I hear his movement, his careful footfalls as he moves around the side of the table. My hands press me back, careful not to make sudden movements as I lift off the boards one limb at a time. My knees, then a palm, slow and gradual movement until I'm backed beside one leg of the table.

"Come out," he whispered. "Let me see you."

I feel a pop in my spine as I draw back, until I'm upright on my knees peeking over the table. He's gazing into the open air I had once occupied, but I can't be certain. It might be foolish hope, but he doesn't seem at all surprise that I'm not there. Is he bluffing?

I stay folded beside the edge of the table, ready to bolt into the dark spilling through the doors and rooms. I don't know if I can get over the wall if I'm pressed back that way, I don't know where the hall ends. Another broken door? Maybe the whole side of Mount Massive had been ripped off, and I could race out into the woods? Farfetched. Stupid. What am I thinking?

My mouth is filled with bitter salt. Blood from my lip. I bit my lip. I'm startled as his pace renews, moving around the table to where I have perched. I keep close beside the boxes, nearly brushing them as I slink away. He's playing with me. He knows I'm here, but he's confident he'll catch me. I try to keep my breathing low, but it's difficult when your legs been looped around a table leg. I froze up when I realized I've gotten tangled. Can't move out and get my leg loose, he'll see me. I'll run. I'll flee to the dark, make it hard to keep on me.

A chill works its way through my body. I've reached for the pouch that I keep the camera in. But it's gone. I've… I lost the camera? How did I? When?

I'm paralyzed by the revelation that I cannot remember. For my very life, I cannot recall where I had set the camera. I had it when I entered the small room, I crawled to… where did I go? What did I do? I was doing a pathetic job of keeping away from a mad Cannibal that set his goal on killing me. And I've lost my camera, my only source of light.

The bearded figure emerges from the side of the table, where I had the top blocking my sight from him. I have twisted over onto my side, when it was futile to shift from the tables underside where my leg was pinned. My eyes have locked on him, and my muscles refuse to take commands. I'm paralyzed. Camera gone, and paralyzed with fear. I can see clearly the tool he carries, the bone saw. It's long, it might've been the type mounted to a table. He carries it like a grocery basket, doesn't let it doop or touch the floor, but keeps it leveled with his hip. The man turns a fraction my way and I hold my breath, I can see the white of his eyes as he scans the room over. He's not looking at me directly. But if I utter a sound now, if my joints creak, he'll be on me faster than I can register the pain.

Death.

A sound drifts from the box braced against my leg. I'm trembling. I don't feel it, but I am. It's only seconds, but in my mind it has been days, before the figure turns and walks by. Fading from my line of sight as my eyes remain set on the swirling black that seems to fill the space he had occupied. I resist the urge to exhale, I can hear his slow steps as they fade, but he hasn't gone far enough to set me to ease.

"Back in the oven, the children go."

I don't move for a long time. Even when his voice fades, it feels like he's still there waiting for me. Watching the illusion of my shadow. His presence is tangible, though there is distance between us now. There must be!

It takes a few more seconds for my thawing mind to recall, the suffocating dark still awaits. The camera, with the green tint in the visor. I need it! Where could I have left it? I try and think, as I slip forward and drag my leg from the table and boxes. I listen, as the saw cries out somewhere. I had it when? I close my eyes and think about the blood in my mouth. I spit it out and wipe the rumpled sleeve over my cheek. I was going to look at what? I saw something, it caught my attention. I cracked one eye a slit and admired the shadow of my fingers, as I opened and shut my hand. Light. From outside.

I creep around the tables legs and nearly choke with relief. The camera is seated beneath the window, on its side but in one piece. I grab it in my hands and thrust my back into the boxes, shoving several out from under the table. I hear the whirr of the tool, the machine, as the wielder gives pause to consider the sound.

Where is he? I slid my elbow over the table as I lift myself, to gaze into the dark. I can't accurately decide where the rasp of the saw had come. It was close but not in the room with me, I click on the enhancement and peer into the visor examining the next half of the room. There's a short cabinet, another desk slanted beside the wall between the two yawning doors, and another desk flipped onto its sides with its legs sticking out. There was no better place to conceal myself, and not with the frail light to cookie cut my shape in shadow.

I don't see the movement I expect in the visor. It's the elevator gate opening, and skulls pour out into my lap. I can only see them falling, feel their weight on my thighs, I can't look down on them. My heads locked back, and people come in. That odd taste that fills my sinuses, blurs my thoughts. The Engine whirs, the resonance rattles in my mind louder and louder until there is nothing.

And suddenly I'm running.

Light flares in my eye sockets as I dash through the corridor. I'm momentarily stalled by my surroundings, I can't remember this place. Mattress, lost plywood. My shadow moves in reverse, creeping back into my ankles as I pad over rotten carpet. There's a noise behind me, a shrieking call like a demon and its master.

"Mine! Mine!"

I know the voice. I know who that is, and now I know where I am headed. I hasten my numb legs as I close in on the desk. I have not an idea how far back he was, I can hear him screaming after me. Or is that the saw? Their voices mingle and distort as the walls ripple, the thick vapor of ash envelopes my nose. I jump and hit the desk with my foot, and lunge upward for the sturdy frame above. Glass bites into the front of my hand as I struggle over the frame and all but tumble to the other side. My legs want to refuse further work, but I force them onward around the corner. If the Cannibal is here, then he won't be in the kitchen. There may be another way out, a door in the kitchen I missed. There had to be something! A way around, I would find it!

My mind was muggy. Some of my thoughts felt normal, but my head felt like lead. I was barely conscious of the camera I held or looked into. The door was shut as I left it, but I kept thinking of shapes and mist swirling, sculpting from shadows. Chasing people into rooms, covering the walls with red. Dig around in a little red, express yourself. If you don't, you might something you regret.

I don't remember passing through the room of lockers, of sour water and flattened boxes. I smelt something in my nose, something hot like fire. Ugh… just, wanted to find a way out of here.

Then I was struggling with the steel door. The door went to where? What was I doing here? I set my forehead against the cool metal and thought. I concentrated on my train wreck of thoughts sputtering through mud and ditches. My heart thudded against the thin fabric of the scrap of cloth they put me in. Murkoff staff. Put me in this smock, then put me in a chair.

I was NOT in an accident.

All right, I need to calm down. I'm getting nowhere like this. I came here, to this door. This door is locked, I couldn't have come here. Did I take a wrong turn? No. I came through… a room, but there were no other doors. My path was straightforward, the problem had a solution, a linear equation that had no deviation.

My shadow flashed against the gray door, as the light pulsed over my backside. Strobe, and sirens. Warning. I lean on the door as I turn to examine the bulb as it flared and faded, and repeated. I try not to focus on it directly, fearing the dull throb that works through my sinuses. I can't get through here, this door. I have to go back.

Back to where?

I'll figure it out.

I'm wasting power in the camera, in the night vision. I was staring at the small battery icon to help evade the odd twitches in my eyes, as I pass through the restroom. Urinals, sinks, lockers. I don't stop to check lockers. I have an idea where I'm going, I want to stay on that for the time. It feels right, it's progress in its base form.

I shield my eyes as I reach the end of the corridor, into the den of death if there is in fact no place to go, no escape. I can hide, but my ratio decreased every instance he's made aware of my presence. I can only grasp a faint idea of what it is I should be hiding from, but I know it is too real.

Climbing over the frame is easier this time, but I must be getting accustomed to the motion. It was becoming reflexive, and in my current state that seemed natural enough. I slip down to the desk on the other side, nearly falling as it creaks under my feet. I carefully step down and moved to the shadows in the hall, with the camera gripped in my hands and my ears wary of the screech of a tool.

When I've entered through the glass and wood frame of the door, I hear his voice as he mutters. The Cannibal, from the kitchen. I cram myself back against the corner of the frame, just behind the desk and watch. I turn off the camera, allowing the natural light to flitter over his shape as he paces about. He paused in the doorway of the furthest joining room and looks about him. I can make out the edges of his beard, glisten in the light with drying blood. I struggle to keep my breathing calm, stay still. I just wait. Just stay still and quiet.

"Appease the spirit with a sacrifice," he mutters, as he begins walking. "And amend all sin." He goes out of sight around the desk, into another room or hall.

It takes a good deal of effort to get my limbs to move while he's out of sight. I don't want to lean up, and find myself eye to eye with him. I don't want to look into his eyes again. There's too much in his eyes, too little in his expression.

I stop beside the frame of the first door, and turn my head to see light. Pale light piercing the ugly blotches of the windows. My first instinct is to dash to them and try to see out, see what has become of the world I miss. But I stop myself.

I had already tried to look through the tall windows. I could see nothing. They were stained, and barred, and impossible to receive through. I was disappointed, more that I couldn't look out the windows than I was in forgetting that I had already tried. And for a brief span I had panicked, because I lost the camera. I had forgotten I had set it down.

It's the stress and the fear. When I panic I become forgetful, that's the truth. That's what I'll believe. It'll help me keep going. That and Lisa. I remember Lisa, I remember without the notepad. I'm calming down, it helps. A little bit will come back. I might lose pieces of myself, but I can get them back. If I die I lose it all, all at once.

A shape in the dark jars me out of these musings. I scuttle back, hitting the opposite doorframe before I recall that the camera, I need to use that. Through the visor I see the Cannibal approach from the end of the hall. Where had he been? In the next room. There would be places to hide, maybe a way out. I needed to see for myself, find what other solution I can find.

I crawl behind the side of the wall and listen to his steps on the carpet, they're near inaudible but I can feel the vibrations through the rickety floor. I try to pace myself with him, stopping whenever he does to listen for a sound. The humming? It's always present in the silence, in the absence of life. Do I know that sound?

I lean around the frame of the door and watch him from a distance. He continues to the end of the shadows, to where the mattress is before he gives pause as though straining to witness what lies in the light.

It's a corridor I turn back to, filled with light and curios left over from the dark ages. A mattress beside the wall, and plywood, some tattered clothing that looks moth eaten. Ahead at the end of the lamps reach, the opening in a plastic barrier.

The obscure detail strikes a cord in my mind, and I snap it up as it adheres to my thoughts. The plastic barriers are a constant, they quarantine the shadow. I've passed through many spaces cut out, into corridors that are decrepit and blocked off. Corridors to be accessed have walls coated with plastic, to keep It contained. To keep It contained.

Patients and probably staff alike were trimming through the walls, putting holes in the boat. What was once contained, would not be for long.

Not for long.

I tucked the camera in its pouch as I moved under the light, my own footsteps were near silent on a sheet of plywood left on the floor. I paused just within the opening of a plastic wall and glanced over the nanohazard doors, set into either wall of the intersecting corridor. Across from where I stood, another section of the plastic was ripped apart.

The patients, they couldn't get through them so they found their own work around. The edges of the plastic were frayed, jagged from hot teeth and blackened. The tool he carried, the saw. A knife didn't do this. A saw did. I slipped through the next breach in the containment wall, straining with the distant reach of light I abandoned. I stumble as my feet catch on rotten sheets, the movement aggravates the strong linger of rot that had settled. There's no sign of death, no blood. I may have mistaken the old sour of neglect for death, but in a way it was all dead. Nothing was alive in this dark forgotten halls.

Some of the walls surface crumbles under my touch.

We wanted to renovate the house. It was an older home, but at the time we could afford it. Put in new carpet, gut the bathroom. It was nice but outdated. We had plans. When or second son, when he was up a little more we would've paid off the hospital and put in a second mortgage on the house. Fixed it up. It would be a dream home.

I lean against the wall and lower the camera, as I press my palm over my eyes. God, no. Don't think of that now. No point. Can't help, will only get me killed.

As if to prove a point I heard the rasp call. I twist about and watch as the Cannibal padded around the corner and passed under the light, straight for me. No, no, no! Is there a way out of here? Where was I going? Don't panic. Think calm. Think of something. Walls. Walls, and a door, plastic walls. Wait, no…. Plastic walls, the alternative solution. Good. How do I get around the walls?

A door.

I spin in place and stare at a door, clogged by boards and nails. Light from beyond the barrier flitters through the gaps, I came make out the surrounding collision of a metal chair and other solid, sharp edges of furniture. I fumble with the camera and get the visor in my eyes.

There's a door beside me, missed in my panic. Keep calm, stay alive. I check the Cannibal, he's nearly reached the first tear in the wall. The door's open ajar, and I give it a slight push and step inside. I push my shoulder to the door as I shut it, and turn the camera to the room I've entered. Just an office with nothing of worth, a desk and a broken lamp. Next to the door are some lockers.

I open the first and search through, hoping for pants or a lab coat. There's nothing but dead insects, and the smell. I gag as I shut the door.

"You're close."

I whirl to the voice, fearing it's in the room with me. Close enough. I can see him bob beyond the shattered glass of a window in the wall, that viewed into the next room. He glances my way and freeze up.

"Run all you like," he spoke, and turned. He faded out of the green hue, but I can't see where. There should be a zoom, but I don't want to fuck with the camera here. "I'll work for you."

The whirring intermixes with the odd fuzziness in my muscles. I rub at my arm as I turn, debating on where I need to turn. Where should I go? The battery in the night vision is getting low, but this place looks to have been abandoned for too long. I doubt any of Murkoff had come through here. Even the dust I kicked up had been undisturbed since everything was shut down. Damn. There was no way out of here, was there?

A door slammed. I turn the camera, keeping my eyes in the glean of the visor. Focus. Focus. Where did that sound—

The door to the small office ground open. I barely glimpsed it in the camera, before I had turned and ran into the door. Somewhere between the dark and my unresponsive hand, I got the door open and ducked out. I snapped it it shut when I heard the first sounds of the saw just on the other side. The Cannibal gave a holler, and I stared at the gray wood as it quaked in place. The saw bit through wood, I could smell the harsh burn as the blade scrapped and chewed.

I ran away but in my confusion got turned around, and realized I was hidden right for the blockade in the corridors end.

There's another door. Another way. I slipped inside as the door not far away cracked and splint. The scorch of wood was stronger on this side, due to the shattered window that connected the two rooms. Mattresses littered the floor, and twisted bed frames. Nothing to hide around or under. I knelt under the open window frame as the saw calmed its fury, and the cries of the lunatic faded. I didn't want to stay –

"There you are!"

I bolt from where the voice hovered in the black. The next door flashed in the visor, and I forced it shut on the screaming cry of the saw as it lunged on my backside. I braced my shoulder to the wood and nearly dropped the camera again. In hindsight, one should not try to hold a door on a madman with a saw, but it was the panic that dictated my actions. I was very fortunate that I did recall the weapon as I felt it chew through the door, and lurched my face back a second before the spinning blade could tear off my nose. I felt warm liquid spill down my chin and feared the worst, but I could still see and I was able to walk.

The room was a library, or records room. Shelves and shelves of books and binders thick with tattered pages. Lumber and broken furniture made the floor a hazard, and I stumbled about as my feet found the tiny teeth of splinters. I lowered the camera as I skimmed through the shelves, finding too much light from the fallen lamp on the floor to help conceal me when the door gave. I took a few quick breathes to stabilize a pinch of the terror, but my heart thumped so hard I thought it would break out of my ribs.

A gaping door offered premature hope when I rushed to the frame, only to realize it was the small office I had escaped from. I could elude him through this side, crawl through the window frame.

The rasping saw brought about an image. Terrible stretching skin white as bone, walls chiseled from stone. No, god, not now! I dropped to my knees and gripped my head as the sound jabbed at my brain, puncturing each cell with heat and cold. I pushed myself away, trying to escape the sound of the door as it crumbled. He's here! Christ, I'll die. He's going to kill me! Cut me to pieces. Tiny little bloody chunks, my body! My body! What hurts!

"Done running?"

I don't look at him. I can't. The very sight of him will kill me. I turn away hunting for the floor for something, a weapon. I debate throwing the camera at him, but then I would die and Murkoff's evil lost. I would be defeated and forgotten, as Jeremy wanted. I cannot let Jeremy win.

An odd out of context thought power-dived into my mind, and the pain subsided almost instantaneously. They were locking doors, to keep It contained. The patients made doors, to work around. Everyone was using doors.

"_Mr. Park. Don't be so linear_."

"Lisa," I mumbled. I was nearly at tears as I looked up. Isn't a window, a kind of door? It's a door for light. Sort of.

Behind me, high on the wall was a large crack. It was far out of my reach. But a desk was braced to a door beneath the hole. I could do this again, and again. I would do this until I died. Over and over until I got it right.

* * *

><p><strong>Park's mind is all kinds of scattered<strong>


End file.
